This activity engages students in environmental stewardship as they work together to conduct a clean-up of the school grounds. The learning also includes a math component as the class sorts and graphs the type of litter they collect. The interdisciplinary approach fosters informed decision making and civic responsibility while taking students outside into the natural world.
This activity offers a great Earth Day project and supports science and social studies outcomes related to habitats and sustainability. The action experience of the schoolyard clean-up could also form the basis of a larger scale environmental effort that sees the school adopt a local threatened habitat. Conservation organizations could aid students with a clean-up of the site, planting of native vegetation, erecting nesting structures and monitoring wildlife abundance. Older students could evaluate the presence of invasive species and implement a plan to reduce the potential impacts of these organisms on native plants and animals.
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