Teacher preparation:

Overarching learning goal: Students develop a safety code for learning about solid waste.

The class safety code can be used when working with waste in other activities.

Student and classroom organisation:

Step 1.

Explain to the students that in this unit they will be working with solid waste. Ask them to explain what this means (suggested answer: stuff that we no longer want). Ask them to give you some examples of waste and write some of these examples on the board.

Step 2.

Explain to students that it's time to think about safety. Ask students to look at all the examples of waste that you wrote on the board and to think about the following questions:

Which ones would you feel okay to hold?
Which ones would you not like to hold? Why is that?
So, you think that it is okay to touch some things, but not others?

There will obviously be differences of opinion amongst the students’ answers.

Step 3.

Explain that to make sure that we are all safe with waste and we all know what we need to be aware of when working with waste, we need to write a safety code. Discuss what is a safety code (a set of rules that everyone agrees with and follows) and why it is needed.

Step 4.

Work with your students to develop a class safety code. Groups of children could be asked to come up with rules for different topics, such as:

When working inside;
When working outside; and
When picking up litter in the yard.

Assessment/Reflection

1. Students use the student worksheet to create a quick quiz about the class safety code to give to another student (it might be easiest to print the worksheet if sharing capabilities in the classroom are restricted). Give students 3-4 minutes to prepare the quiz and another 3-4 minutes to answer the questions. Ask students to return their quizzes to their authors for marking.

2. Display the Class Safety Code in the classroom. Remind the students of this code each time they undertake a waste activity.

Be safe with waste

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