Teaching sequence

Step 1

Begin this activity by asking students to brainstorm on what they understand by the following terms:

Renewable resources
Non-renewable resources
Recycling

Write student responses on the board and explain to students that in this activity they will be unpacking the concept of renewable and non-renewable resources and investigating how recycling fits in with this concept.

Step 2

Non-renewable resources - To help students understand what is meant by 'non-renewable resources' students will first explore the aluminium cycle; aluminium is a non-renewable resource.

Begin by asking students to watch the following video on the aluminium can cycle (also available on student worksheet):

The Aluminium Cycle - Video 2 https://vimeo.com/75277529

Once complete, ask students to work through the following questions and use the web to find examples of other non-renewable resources (questions also available on the student worksheet):

What is the raw material that aluminium is made from?
How is the raw material turned into aluminium?
Why is aluminium a non-renewable resource? Discuss and then explain.
What are other examples of other non-renewable resources?
In your opinion, what role does recycling play in non-renewable resources?

Step 3.

Renewable resources - Students view the first three and a half minutes of the following video (also available on the student worksheet):

Introduction to Private Native Forestry in New South Wales Australia from Peter Hill https://vimeo.com/peterwhill/pnfintro.

As they watch, ask students to work through the following questions and use the web to find examples of other renewable resources.

What products are made from timber?
Why are trees a renewable resource? Discuss and explain.
Why are renewable resources not unlimited resources? Discuss and explain.
What are other examples of renewable resources?
In your opinion what role does recycling play in renewable resources?

Step 4

School community survey - In this part of the activity students will survey the school community to find out what people understand of the terms 'renewable' and 'non-renewable resources', and how waste and recycling could be improved at your school. Explain to students that the aim of the survey is to have students choose one or more of the ideas from the survey that they as a class would like to do and begin the planning process.

Designing your survey - Begin the survey by working as a class to brainstorm who their school community consists of. This will include students, teachers, senior staff, administrators and parents. A school council could take too long to get back to students. Write responses to brainstorming on the board.

To find out what people at their school understand about the terms renewable and non-renewable and what they think needs to be done to improve the waste management at your school, students will need to survey the people who use the school. Students will get better answers if they have questions that prompt people’s thinking; how the question is asked can provide more information and greater insight into what people think needs to be done. For example, the question "Does the school need to improve its recycling?" could be asked in several different ways that would illicit more information from the person being interviewed instead of a simple YES or NO answer:

How does the school need to improve its recycling?
How can the school recycle more materials?
How can we get the school community to recycle more materials?
What is stopping the school from recycling more materials?

It's up to students to decide how open ended or specific they want to be: open ended questions may lead to more interesting ideas and suggestions for improvement but may lead to data that will be harder to measure; more specific questions will lead to data that is easier to measure but answers will be more constrained so there may be fewer interesting answers and suggestions.

In addition, students will need to think about what they will cover in their survey. For example, will they include questions such as:

Renewable resources: what are they? Where do they come from? Why are they important to our environment?
Non-renewable resources: what are they? Where do they come from? Why are they important to our environment?
Waste including litter, rubbish, recycling and compost
Water use reduction
Stormwater pollution
Students and staff comfort and amenities.

Students will need to design a common survey with the same questions that the whole class can use so they can combine all their material. You can choose to either interview other students in person or use an online survey tool (such as SurveyMonkey).

In addition the the survey must be confidential so that the information gathered can’t be related back to any single individual. To achieve confidentiality the rules are:

Names are not placed on the survey sheets.
Students don’t talk about who they interviewed and what was written.

Conducting your survey - Your survey will need to be conducted in break time when other students and staff members are available to be interviewed.

Assessment/reflection

Processing your survey data - To process their survey students will need to:

1. Ask students to combine all the results from the survey, grouping all the answers that are similar and look for patterns in the data (what are the most common responses, what percentage of people answered in one way or another). Decide how you want to display the data (e.g. graph or charts).

2. As a class discuss and go through each idea and pull out the ideas that the class could do with the resources available in the school. Working as a class choose the three best ideas the class wants to investigate further.

3. Break the class into three groups and assign each group with one of the three best ideas. Each group should investigate how this idea could be put into action and should create a short presentation with either PowerPoint or an online tool (e.g. Prezi) describing how their idea would be best executed.

4. Ask groups to share their presentations with the class, with students using the Peer Assessment Rubric to assess the presentations of other groups.

5. Ask students to complete the KWHL chart (also available on the student worksheet).

Homework

If you want to explore the nature of recycling further, ask students to make their own paper using recycled paper. Download the factsheet: How to make paper (also available on the student worksheet).

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

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

National Recycling Week - Renewable or Non-renewable?

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