Bright Sparks - What Do We Recycle? - Mathematics - Year 2

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 60 years Visy has been striving for sustainability, reducing the amount of waste going to landfill by collecting recyclable materials and recycling them into new paper and packaging products. Click here to find out more about Visy and their innovative work in recovering and transforming recyclable materials into new products to preserve our earth’s precious resources.

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 waste items can be put in the recycle bin.

21st century skills:

Australian Curriculum Mapping

Content descriptions:

Year 2 Mathematics

Recognise and represent multiplication as repeated addition, groups and arrays (ACMNA031).

Syllabus outcomes: MA1‑1WM, MA1‑2WM, MA1‑3WM, MA1‑6NA.

General capabilities: Numeracy.

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability.

Relevant parts of Year 2 achievement standards:

They represent multiplication and division by grouping into sets.

Topic: Sustainability, Waste.

Unit of work: Bright Sparks – 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 categories poster.
Learning intentions and success criteria display (optional).
Magnetic counters/tiles or regular counters/tiles and blu-tac.

Keywords: Waste, 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.

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher Preparation

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 waste items can be put in the recycle bin.

Success criteria:

Students can collect one day’s data then use an array to predict a weekly total.
Students can collect data about the recyclables that are in the class bin.
Students can use the data found to work out how many recyclables could be going to landfill.
Students can name the five main groups of recyclable materials (paper and cardboard, aluminium, steel, plastic and glass).

Teacher content information:

Almost everything we do in our daily lives creates waste. We can describe waste as something we no longer want or need. The food and drinks we consume, the clothes and cosmetics we wear, the transport we take, the stuff we buy, the energy we use in our homes and workplaces – all these things have wast

...

- or - to view worksheets

Student Worksheet

Bin Audit Record

Type of recyclable material:	Number of items found:
Plastic
Paper and Cardboard
Glass
Aluminium
Steel
Total:

Recycling Arrays

A Year 2 class has counted the number of recyclable items they found in their classroom rubbish bin:

Type of recyclable material:	Number of items found:
Plastic	1
Paper and Cardboard	6
Glass	4
Aluminium	10
Steel	5
Total:	26 items

Task instructions:

1. Choose one group of recyclables from the example above.
2. Make an array using counters to estimate how many of that item you would find in one week.
3. Draw an array in the space below.
4. Fill in the gaps in the equations underneath your array drawing.

Five groups of

_____________

makes

_____________

_______

_____________

Use the data collected in

...

- or - to view worksheets

Activity: Bright Sparks – What Do We Recycle? – Mathematics – Year 2