National Recycling Week: My Lunch Box - Foundation

Activity Introduction

Quick summary: In this activity students look at what happens to their lunch waste, learning about the best ways to dispose of their lunch waste and how to avoid littering. Students work as a class to discuss the waste in the lunchboxes, and then work independently to complete a colouring in worksheet around this activity.

This lesson has been developed as part of the Schools Recycle Right Challenge for Planet Ark’s National Recycling Week. Register your lesson or other activities so they can be counted towards the national achievement and to receive other free support materials.

Learning intentions:

Students understand that different types of waste can be reused, recycled, composted or treated as rubbish.
Students understand that different types of waste and should go into different waste containers.
Students take responsibility for belongings and for avoiding littering.

21st century skills:

Australian Curriculum Mapping

Foundation Year Science

Objects are made of materials that have observable properties (ACSSU003)
Science involves exploring and observing the world using the senses (ACSHE013)

Foundation Year Geography

The reasons why some places are special to people, and how they can be looked after (ACHASSK017)
Reflect on learning to propose how to care for places and sites that are important or significant (ACHASSI009)

Foundation Year English

Listen to and respond orally to texts and to the communication of others in informal and structured classroom situations (ACELY1646)
Use interaction skills including listening while others speak, using appropriate voice levels, articulation and body language, gestures and eye contact (ACELY1784)

Syllabus Outcomes: GE-1, GE-2, ST-4WS, ST-9ME, EN-1A.

Topic: National Recycling Week

Time required: 60 mins

Level of teacher scaffolding: High – teachers will need to lead all activities and keep an eye on how students dispose of their waste.

Resources required: Students’ lunches, bins for at least rubbish and recycling, copies of worksheets, appropriate safe scissors and colour markers/pencils.

Homework and extension opportunities: None.

Keywords: Waste, rubbish, recycle, reuse, compost, litter, bin, box, lunchbox.

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.

These Planet Ark resources were developed by Cool Australia with funding from the Alcoa Foundation.

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goals: In this activity students look at what happens to their lunch waste, learning about the best ways to dispose of their lunch waste and how to avoid littering. Through this activity students begin to understand that different types of waste can be reused in different ways and should therefore go into different waste containers.

Teacher content information: Foundation year students have a wide range of new things to learn about when becoming part of a school community. At this age one aspect of being part of school community is taking responsibility of one’s personal belonging, including one's lunch and the associated waste. In order to take responsibility for their waste, students will need to understand the school’s waste system so they can make sure their waste is disposed of properly.

While the activity is based around the lunchbox, it is not necessary to have actual lunchboxes; other food containers or bags are equally suitable. Howe

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Student Worksheet

Draw one type of rubbish that you might find in your lunchbox that you can recycle.

Colour in the waste items the same colour as the correct bin it should be placed in.

This video shows what students from another school do to make less waste at their school:

Managing Classroom Waste - Video 5 from Cool Australia on Vimeo.

These Planet Ark resources were developed by Cool Australia with funding from the Alcoa Foundation.

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Activity: National Recycling Week: My Lunch Box – Foundation