Teaching sequence

Step 1

Begin this activity by asking students to waste the video below (also available on the student worksheet):

Upper Primary School Students Managing Waste - Video 4 from Cool Australia on Vimeo.

Once complete ask students to discuss how similar the school in the video is to your school. Consider the following questions:

What is the same?
What is different?
Is waste dealt with in the same way?
How do students manage the waste differently?

Step 2

Show students a general selection of clean waste that is often part of a school’s waste stream.

Working in groups ask students to describe what type of material each item is made from, using the student worksheet to record their answers in the column 'Materials it can be made from' (make sure students only fill out this column at this stage). Ask students to keep their responses simple, and use words such as metal, wood, glass, plastic, paper, cardboard etc. Students may need to conduct further research for some items.

Once complete ask groups to compare their answers.

Did everyone have the same answers?
Were there some items that were difficult to identify?
What were they and why were they difficult?

Step 3

Discuss the difference between rubbish, recycling, reusing and composting green waste. What do these mean? Write student responses on the board.

Again working in groups ask students to go back to their worksheet and fill in the second column; ‘What do we do with it at our school?’

Once complete ask students to compare answers and discuss the following points:

Where does our waste go?
What do you think happens to the following types of waste once they leave the school:

Paper
Plastic
Aluminium

Step 4

Ask students to watch the following video (also available on the student worksheet), explaining to them that this describes how aluminium is recycled and turned into new items:

The Aluminium Cycle - Video 2 from Cool Australia on Vimeo.

Once the video is finished, ask students to again work in groups to make a labelled diagram of how aluminium cans are recycled, starting with a can in a shop and finishing with a can back in the shop. They can use the ‘Aluminium Fact Sheet’ to help them. Get students to think about the processes that occur at each stage. Use words such as solid, liquid, melt, molten to describe the processes.

The diagram should include the following stages:

Shop/Consuming
Collection
Transport
Melting
Casting
Can making and filling
Shop/Consuming

Once students have completed their diagrams ask the class to share their diagrams and create a complete diagram on the board for the class to work from. Working with the class, use this diagram to determine:

What the recycler wanted to achieve.
Where heat is being used as part of the recycling process.
What the cans were like before they went in the furnace.
What the aluminium looked like when it left the furnace.
What happened to the aluminium inside the furnace.
The temperature of the aluminium.
Whether an aluminium can would melt in the sun.

Assessment/reflection

1. Ask students to work independently using Prezi to create a new diagram with coloured illustrations showing the stages of can recycling as well interesting facts and features about can recycling.

2. Ask students reflect on this activity by completing the PMI chart (available on the student worksheet).

Homework/Extension

Ask students to select one stage of the aluminium can cycle and explore it in more detail, creating a poster describing and illustrating this stage.

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

National Recycling Week - Aluminium Cycle

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