Forgot the URL....

https://sites.google.com/site/recycleit1234/

Thanks for doing that. When I saw that you did the gmail account, I signed in and picked the neighbor template. It has trees :) I dont mind switching it if you like the family one better!! Let me know what you both think.

When we all agree that the template works, I guess we can just discuss, add, and edit things as we please.

Melissa- I think it is your turn for the concept map. I will most some more ideas to edit the last version!

Website

Hey guys! I just created a team email for the website. It's recyclinggurus@gmail.com. Email me to get the password. Other than that we need to decide on a format we want to use on google sites. I personally liked the "family" layout. Let me know what you guys are thinking!

Final

Let's start talking about the final website!

Comments?

Regards to Melissa comment

Meilissa-
I saw your comments and im not sure what she means by textbook. I have decided to included information that could be found in a classroom textbook and also included some things from our textbook. That way, I am covered both ways.

As far as your part, I would just use the lessons you have already developed to integrate into the podcast. Megan and I have already posted our scripts so it looks like yours would take off where megan has left off, and you would also be the concluding section of the podcast.

Let me know if you need any help!

Rough Draft of Script Pt 2

Over a two week period, one class of fourth graders took recycling into their own hands. They cut down on the trash in the school’s cafeteria by composting. Composting is often referred to as nature’s way of recycling. It is the biological process of breaking down organic waste. Instead of just throwing all of their food waste away after lunch, the students saved it and brought it back to class. They brought food waste such as banana peels, apple cores, and other organic waste materials, and placed them in the compost. Fifteen minutes a day were allotted to place the items in the compost, write up a description of the item or items they placed in the compost and why they could place those items in the compost pile. Next, they placed a tally on the board under the correct category. As a class, the students decided to classify the waste items into three categories: fruits, vegetables, and other. After all the students were done placing their tallies on the board under the correct categories, the teacher would find the total for each category daily.

At the end of the two week period, each student used Excel to create a table and graph of the class data. They wanted to see what area they cut down on the most waste. During this unit, they not only learned the importance of recycling, but also developed their inquiry analysis and communication skills, in the areas of both math and science. Many different disciplines were combined into this unit, including National Educational Technology Standards for Students: The Next Generation.

This project started as just one class, but the hope is that this idea will catch on with the rest of the school. What a difference an entire school could make by composting.

rough draft of script

Hello everyone and welcome to our recycling unit podcast. Our aim for this unit is to teach the next generation the importance of reducing (which is minimizing our waste(, reusing (which is using things multiple times and sometimes in new ways), and recycling (which allows us to separate certain materials that can be reprocessed into something new). Our main focus has been on engaging students through project based learning. By allowing the students to develop their own action plan,  they gain a sense of ownership over their learning. We started out the unit by giving students a base knowledge of what materials can be recycled. Students were given the opportunity to sort real objects into labeled bins.  There were some wonderful student to student conversations about materials that were in the gray area. Students were then given the opportunity to observe how much our school wastes by not recycling in the cafeteria. They were given the task to observe one sample of waste from a student lunch per day. Each student in our class collected a week’s worth of samples , and recorded it on their data sheets. They separated the waste into a variety of recyclable material categories. From there, we headed to the computer lab and generated some bar graphs to display how much of each material we have been wasting in our cafeteria. We took it a step further and combined all of our data to observe the big picture of waste from our school. This was an excellent activity to integrate technology and important math concepts with graphing. Students were able to visually see and make sense of the data they had collected. Students made excellent inferences and we had some inspiring conversations about how we could make a change in our cafeteria. The next stage of this project is to give students the power to put their discussions into action. Students collaborated in groups to create a campaign on ways to improve recycling in the cafeteria, based upon the data we collected. Most of the groups are still hard at work on a variety of creative ideas. However, one group has already pitched their idea of a compost pile, and put it into action in our classroom.

Podcast

That all sounds great! The only change is that it wasn't a compost in the cafeteria, it was in a single classroom. The hope is that the idea will catch on and grow and it will become a school wide compost pile which will be in the cafeteria. Otherwise it all looks good. I'm starting on my script now.

I think it would be fitting base the podcast on the reduce reuse and recycle concepts. So I could start and talk about how we learned what these terms mean and we sorted through materials that can be recycled. I could talk about our experience learning about recycling in other countries for our global perspective (how we reached out to them on e-pals). Then talk about how we took a closer look at our own cafeteria and saw how much we were wasting by not recycling our own garbage. I will discuss our further plans to create a recycling action plan for our school. Then, I could lead into your composting lesson by saying something like: we took our cafeteria examination a little bit further and discussed how we can reduce our food waste. We came up with the great idea of creating a school compost pile....

Then you can talk about what a compost pile is and how you put it into action...and whatever else.

What are the textook concepts...what textbook do we use?

Any ideas for the third part?

Project

I don't know Katie. I've read over the explanation of the assignment a few times, and all I can figure is that we each do our portion on what we've been doing with our portion of recycling. For example, I will talk about my lesson on composting and I will talk about the data collection we are going to be doing. Other than that- I have no idea! I'm a little shaky too because I don't know if this will take up enough time. Also, what order do we want to do. I was thinking mine would fit in good second.

Question

Does anyone know what project we use for this...or does it just mean the recycling unit overall??

I can do the first of the three parts for the podcast.

New assignment

"You will create an informative Podcast, using Audacity. This podcast will identify and describe several aspects of your project to share with parents and others. Each team member will be required to discuss a different area of your progress. You will also be required to pull out at least two concepts from the textbook. Each group member will need to use different concepts that the other group members. Each podcast will need to be different than the other group members. Also, the podcasts should flow from one group members to the others. Remember, this is a discussion of what has been done so far. You will turn in each portion separately but when the instructor puts them together, the podcast should flow. This is a time that the blog will come in very handy -- you might even post exactly what you will say on your blog so that your group will be sure it does flow."

Thoughts?