“Be a Food Waste Warrior” is a three-part science and math lesson that can be adjusted in complexity depending on grade level. It includes food waste audit log sheets, discussion questions, a companion PowerPoint, and additional teacher resources and materials.
Students will learn about the ways in which food impacts the environment by recording data from a student food waste audit during their lunch period.The audit will engage basic science and math skills to (1) convert food waste weights to water used and GHGs emitted, and (2) calculate the difference in GHG emissions depending on whether food waste is landfilled or composted. Participating students will ultimately understand how to reduce food waste and why reducing food waste is important to conserving natural resources and wildlife habitat.
Engineering, English, Reading or Language Arts, Science
This lesson is a literacy-based lesson which further explores the five areas that are measured by Arc in order to learn about some of the best practices that schools and school districts are doing nationally to become sustainable schools.
Engineering, English, Reading or Language Arts, Science
This lesson is a literacy-based lesson that allows students to develop conceptual understanding and the vocabulary needed to discuss how scientists, engineers, and facility managers use data to improve the efficiency of a building.
Career and Technical Education (CTE): Architecture & Construction, Environmental Education, Science
In this STEM design project, students will research and identify what makes a community more eco-friendly by exploring the natural landscape of their own community, its biodiversity, animal habitats and green spaces. Students will then design and create a scale drawing of an existing neighborhood, changing or improving its natural and man-made features by taking into account the plants and animals that live there and their needs by applying their knowledge of various habitats to preserve its biodiversity while making room for human inhabitants.
In this 2-day lesson, students develop indicators to measure quality of life and conduct a survey of peers and adults to obtain data for their indicators. They analyze the survey data by calculating measures of central tendency and producing charts to demonstrate their results.
By plotting the geographical coordinates of community resources in a given city, students will consider how the location of resources affects sustainability. Students
calculate distances and midpoints using coordinate geometry.
This 2-day lesson begins with a lively introductory activity in which students examine how a system works. They experience limits to success, redesign a system to improve efficiency, and begin to identify assumptions that drive human behavior. Then students analyze current global trends in primary school education and use systems thinking to generate solutions that address root causes of barriers to education.
