Earth Day-Bringing it Home Everyday!

STEM?  The objective is to not teach separate subjects, but to teach those subjects within the context that they occur in the real world.  Earth Day reminds us that there are hundreds of environmental issues that need to be resolved many of which are right in your own backyard. 

Earth Day is an everyday opportunity!

Looking at environmental issues any day of the year is a great source of problems that need solving – ripe for an authentic Problem Based Learning Unit.  Many times environmental issues are full of different perspectives (global warming for example) that are perfect for helping students understand perspectives, read informational texts, find evidence to support claims and collaborate on solutions fitting perfectly with the Common Core.  It is easy to hit Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics principles (STEM) if you are collecting data, graphing, problem solving, engineering solutions and using technology to share results and campaign for solutions all within a local habitat.

So what is in your backyard? 

Have students check out the local paper to see if there are land use issues or other environmental issues going on around town:

Does your community have sound, noise, light, or air pollution?

Does your community have water issues, too much, too little, too polluted?

Does your community need sprucing up?  Is graffiti or litter a problem?

How about your school building?  Can you do a simple litter survey in the halls? What types of litter did you find?  Who is responsible for it?  How could it be stopped? 

How about the lunchroom?  How much garbage do you generate? Where does your garbage go?  Can it be reduced?  What can be re-used (we raised a pig at our school to eat all of the leftovers!)? Recycled?  How can plants help the environment inside or outside your school building? 

How about doing an energy audit of your building or your home? 

Act Local, Think Global

You can help your students learn about and improve the world around them with simple projects based on local problems. 

Want to go global?  Edutopia has some great Earth day projects with global sharing opportunities.

Want to teach your students about activism?  Check out this blog on Teaching and the Environmental Crisis, which features schools that have taken action to improve their environment and communities.

Looking for more great resources?  Check out Great Interactive Resources for Earth Day.

What is in your backyard? Have your students been involved in a community environmental issue?  Please share!

Teachable Moment: 3 Things the Government Shutdown and Graffiti Have in Common

What does the government shutdown have to do with a graffiti artist in NYC?  First, both arise as teachable moments, an unplanned opportunity to connect social studies, language arts, and the arts to real world current events.  Second, resolution of the issues will take the ability to see other perspectives and compromise.  Third, they are both “complex situations” with plenty of different perspectives that can teach students to think critically about such questions as:

• How do rules protect individual rights as well as meet the needs of society?
• What are the responsibilities of a good citizen? 
• What are the responsibilities of our leaders?
• What are the lessons that can be learned from current events?
• What role does social media or the media, in general, play in our perspective of events?

No time like the present

Many educators feel they might not have the time to talk about current events, but with increased expectations for critical thinking, evidence-based persuasive writing, and literacy skills in all subject areas, hot news stories can hook your students and encourage them to develop critical thinking around the issues. 

Embrace, deface or erase?

Look at the issues surrounding the famed (or infamous?) British graffiti artist, Banksy, who is taking up an “artist’s residency” this month in New York City.  Each day in October he is “installing” art in a New York City neighborhood.  The art, sometimes whimsical (he has painted “the musical” under some other NYC graffiti so that it read Playground Mob – the musical) or complex as the painting of horses at war with night vision goggles, or beautiful as this truck transformed into the ultimate diarama.  His graffiti/art is drawing crowds and creating quite a buzz in social media as people strive to discover and share it before it disappears.

Ask your students

Is this person an artist or a criminal?  Should his art be covered up or protected from other graffiti behind plexiglass?  Should we embrace or erase?  Are the people defacing his art any different? Being outside the law is part of his popularity, should he be stopped?

There is a great lesson in the SCAN library that can give your students a head start in their critical thinking.  The Graffiti:  Freedom of Expression or Vandalism? Scenario in the SCAN tool at TregoED.org provides 4 different perspectives, guiding critical thinking questions and a private discussion area for your class.  (The SCAN library holds over 100 other free scenarios that teachers can use with their classes.  For a short video about the tool or how to set up a lesson go to http://tregoed.org/teachers/new-to-scan.html.) 

You can add these links to your lesson to provide background research to help students develop their perspective:

Video news clips:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50156760n

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0b90YppquE

http://news.yahoo.com/video/banksy-goes-rogue-nyc-233840768.html

News stories:

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/elusive-graffiti-artist-banksy-hits-nyc-20474753

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/urban-artist-banksy-dots-boroughs-creations-article-1.1477611

http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/9/4819726/banksy-interviewed-about-new-york-art-show-better-out-than-in

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/08/20871038-banksys-nyc-street-show-draws-fans-and-defacers?lite

Don’t miss this opportunity to use this event as an opportunity to think critically about our laws and responsibilities as citizens as well as consider how compromise, civil discourse and different perspectives all come to play in the resolution of the problem.

Make another connection

Use these Best Resources on Compromise and Best Resources to help Understand the Federal Government Shutdown compiled by Larry Ferlazzo and posted on his blog “Websites of the Day” to take student thinking one step further.  How do those same essential questions apply to this situation?

NOTE:  The SCAN lesson library and discussion tool is 100% free to educators. This SCAN lesson was inspired by MaryAnne Molishus elementary class project http://scan-werecriticaltothinking.blogspot.com/2012/02/current-events-prompt-critical-thinking.html. 

Current Events Prompt Critical Thinking!

I remember “doing” current events back in my day (you know – when the current event was “new vaccine for polio” or “teacher burned when stoking the coal fire”).   We tore them out of the paper, identified the who, what, where and why and if called upon read them aloud in class.  I don’t ever think that I connected the current event to my studies or to my life.  Today students are bombarded with current events in every way imaginable.  Teachers that make the connections in their classroom, reap the rewards. 

Award-winning Lesson

One such teacher is MaryAnn Molishus from Goodnoe Elementary School in Newtown, PA.  Just like many other teachers, Mrs. Molishus set up a bulletin board to welcome her students (with the help of her daughter).  The graffiti style lettering and a local news report on vandalism in her town inspired a critical thinking problem solving project for her students.  What better way to help her 5^th graders understand the essential questions “How do rules protect individual rights as well as meet the needs of society?” And “What are the responsibilities of a good citizen?” than to help her students see this popular art form from different perspectives.

Teaching Perspectives

Maryanne developed a scenario for the SCAN tool with four perspectives (art historian, property owner, graffiti artist, and police officer) and enriched the lesson with some online resources.  Using the online discussion tool, students explored the issues and suggested solutions to the problem.

Maryann was thrilled that “they not only learned about this community issue but learned to discuss a topic, consider other points of view, stay on point while chatting online and understand that there are many facets to one issue.”  To further enrich the lesson, students went on to examine new proposed legislation set to ban the sale of spray paint to minors in their home state.  They were encouraged to determine a position on the new law and write to their government officials to persuade them to vote for or against the law. Now, that’s making a lesson rigorous and relevant!

Reaping the Rewards!

Mrs. Molishus was able to integrate community issues, reading, writing, research, government, digital and community citizenship starting with a current event and the SCAN tool from TregoED.  She not only addressed the standards that students must meet in social studies, but also encouraged them to appreciate other perspectives and participate in the democratic process.  Kudos to you Mrs. Molishus for creating a lesson that gets them thinking and congratulations to your students on a job well done!

Note:  You can find Mrs. Molishus' lesson "Graffiti:  Freedom of Expression or Vandalism?" in the TregoED SCAN library