Activity Introduction
Quick summary: In this lesson, students will collect data on their own recycling habits and use this to evaluate and reflect upon recycling and waste across the school.
This activity has been developed in partnership with Visy. For over 70 years Visy has been committed to finding sustainable solutions for Australia and New Zealand’s recyclables and helping to reduce local landfills. Visy collects, receives and sorts paper, cardboard, glass, plastics, steel and aluminium from households, businesses and schools with the purpose of reusing these products in the re-manufacture of new packaging products.
Learning intentions:
- Students will be able to use arrays to find the approximate amount of recycled material that could be recovered by their class each week
- Students will understand which materials can be recycled.
21st century skills:
Curriculum Mapping
To view our Australian Curriculum alignment click here
To view our NZ Curriculum alignment click here
Topic: Recycling, Sustainability.
Unit of work: Visy Education – Primary Mathematics.
Time required: 60 mins.
Level of teacher scaffolding: Low – teacher will model process explicitly before students complete task.
Resources required:
- Device capable of presenting a video to the class
- Student Worksheet (printed, one per student)
- Class rubbish bin
- Tongs and/or latex-free gloves (for each student)
- Recycling Guidelines poster – Australian version (printed, one per each group of three)
- Recycling Guidelines poster – New Zealand version (printed, one per each group of three)
- Magnetic counters/tiles or regular counters/tiles and blu-tac.
Keywords: Materials, recycling, plastic, firm plastic, soft plastic, cardboard, paper, steel, aluminium, environment.
The information and statistics included in this document are approximate and have been simplified for educational/illustrative purposes. They should not be relied upon for any other purpose.
Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.