3rd Grade Environmental Pollution Lesson Plan

Learning Targets

The primary objective of this plan is to have the students create a lesson plan that meets GPS S3L2 State of Georgia criteria. This criterion requires 2 things to be taught.

S3L2. Students will recognize the effects of pollution and humans on the environment.

a.  Explain the effects of pollution (such as littering) to the habitats of plants and animals.

b.  Identify ways to protect the environment.

·  Conservation of resources

·  Recycling of materials

The general secondary objective is to introduce students to the concept of how engineering is working to solve environment problems:

  1. By reducing and preventing pollution
  2. And/or efforts to resolve/cleanup pollution

Specifically – In the lesson extension we would like to possibly discuss how a technology (robot) could be used to clean up the environment.

Background:

By the end of the lesson we would like the kids to have an understanding of what pollution is, why we don’t want it, and what they can do to help. Pollution = BAD.

Pollution is trash that is in a place that it should not be in. Some can be fixed by the efforts of one, and some pollution takes the efforts of many. Pollution comes in three forms, creating the acronym LAW. LAW stands for Land, Air, and Water. Land pollution is something that harms the earth’s surface, like bottles, wrappers, and gas spills. Water pollution is something that makes water bad for people, animals, and plants. Over half of the Earth’s drinkable water is polluted. Air pollution is something that makes the air we breathe harmful to us. Things that cause this are factories, cars, and fire.

Essential Questions:

What is pollution? What can you do to help?

Land Pollution:

You might want to start describing Land Pollution by giving the kids examples. Once you think that they have the concept of it, you can introduce the land pollution activity. In this activity you would need a sock (or something starchy like a sock) and tell the students to get a piece of trash. They then can come and put their pieces of trash in the sock until it can’t hold any more trash. This represents how the world is full of pollution and how it harms the environment.

Materials: sock and trash

Air Pollution:

  1. Take an empty balloon and fill it with leftover paper dots from a hole punch or other paper scraps. (recycle)
  2. Tell the students that the balloon represents our atmosphere. The paper scraps represent particle and other air pollution. The breathing into the balloon represents human contribution literally and firguratively.
  3. Fill the balloon with breath (our human contribution). Tell the students you are showing how our pollution is pushing the atmosphere to the limit.
  4. Keep “adding pollution” until the balloon is full. Then while explaining how the environment has reached its capacity, pop the balloon.

Extension Ideas:

  1. Write “O-Zone” or “Atmosphere” on the balloon to help kids connect.
  2. Try shuffling pictures of pollution into the balloon for step 1 so not everything is a metaphor.
  3. Ask the kids to try and put the balloon together. Once they realize they can’t, they will realize we only have one atmosphere that can’t be replaced.

Materials: Paper scraps (hole punch scraps are ideal), balloon

Water Pollution:

Materials:

Clear container – jar, aquarium, clear plastic bowl, etc

Water colors or food dyes

Picture of underwater environment (we could provide on the website)

Objective:

Demonstrate water pollution by dirtying up clear water.

  1. Fill up the container with water to represent the water before pollution
  2. One by one have students come up and put a little water color or food dye into the water. Every time a student puts more colors into the water, it will become murkier. Explain how water pollution is hurting the environment and us.
  3. Would you want to drink this water? Let the students see what the water looks like.

Extension Ideas:

▬  Place a picture of an underwater environment on the opposite side of the container. As the water becomes murkier the picture will become less visible.

▬  Try using other materials to put into the container to represent pollutants or debris.

Beverage cans

Oil cans

Tire Are these to be used with the graphic below? If so how?

Shoe

Chair

Refrigerators

Boot on hook

Sunken Boats

Factory pollution

Old car

Old fishing equipment

Oil barrel

Recycle symbol

Dam

Sun

Fish

Tree

Birds

People

Rain

Trash can

The Kell High School Robotics Team

The Kell High School Robotics Team