The "Polluted" Classroom

I have a wonderful team that is overflowing with amazing teaching ideas!  One that I did, but cannot take credit for coming up with, is polluting my classroom to help introduce pollution.  After dropping my kids off at lunch, I came back and began to trash my room....if you know me at all, you will know that I am not a neat freak by any means, but in my work space, I can't handle a mess for the sake of a mess, so this was hard....I could feel my chest tightening up as I was spreading trash around my room and knocking over chairs (not really...but I like the dramatics of it).

After the trashing, I had just about enough time to heat my lunch up and take all of 1 bite of it before picking my kiddos up.  I didn't really care though because I was so excited to see their reactions.  We came back to the room, they expressed their surprise, and then expressed their displeasure when I told them they now had to clean it up. :)

It took them 15 minutes to get everything spic and span and back in place!  They didn't think that was too bad.  I explained that it only took me, 1 person, 10 minutes to make the big mess, and it took them 15 minutes X 20 people, which equated to 300 minutes, or 5 hours to clean it all up.  I asked them to think about that in terms of our environment and all the people that pollute it.  

After that we watched a 3 minute clip that showed some of the devastating effects of pollution.  I had them discuss at their tables the following questions: 

1. What is pollution?

2. Why is it bad?

3. What are different types of pollution?

4. What can we do to help?

We talked about what they discussed and then read and completed a Pollution and Conservation Mini-book. 

To get this mini-book visit my TpT store by clicking here.

This lesson was definitely one of my favorites from this year!  Students were immediately hooked (for all you Pirates out there! :) )and excited to learn more! #tlap