AIM:

To teach the children about the consequences of littering and to introduce the Reduce Reuse Recycle mantra, showing practically what this can mean.

PREPARATION:

• In the week leading up the lesson, collect as many plastic and bottles as you can and generally any piece of litter that you think could be useful for making instruments from. We found old Pringles tubes were really useful as well as beer bottle tops.


• If you have a chance to use the internet during the week, try to find and print off some pictures showing landscape and wildlife badly affected by litter.

TOOLS REQUIRED:

• Plenty of rubbish suitable for making instruments from


• 1metre of soft wire


• String


• Hammer


• Nails


• Sellotape


• A poster-sized piece of plain paper


• 4 seed packets for prizes


• Permanent pen


• Chalk


• Blackboard


• Scissors


• Knives

LESSON:

Introduction:

• Take the children and all the tools outside. A more informal setting encourages the children to see Green Club as fun and different from normal school activities.


• Get the 2 garden monitors to take everyone on a tour of the garden- noting what has grown/changed etc and also ask the 2 compost monitors to show us how the compost bin is progressing.


• Quiz: do a quick true/false recap-quiz covering what we learnt about growing compost in Lesson 2 (true: hands on heads, false: hands on bellies). The 2 winners get a bag of seeds each to take home and plant as a prize and will also be the next 2 compost monitor for the week, in charge of checking that the right waste is going into the compost bin and for turning the heap once a week. Also do a quick true/false recap-quiz covering what we have talked about growing your own vegetables in Lesson 1. The 2 winners get a bag of seeds each to take home and plant as a prize and will also be the next 2 gardening monitor for the week, in charge of daily watering and weeding.

LESSON:

Ask the question:

What do a cigarette filter, a plastic water bottle and a plastic bag have in common? (draw the items on the board). Once the children have given their ideas, tell them the answer: Cigarette filters, plastic water bottles and plastic bags are the most common items found littering seas, rivers, lakes and beaches in the world.

Tell the children these basic facts:

1. 4.5 billion cigarette butts litter our planet each year. These take 100s of years to disappear. # 5 to 10 million people die each year because of drinking water (fresh water) that has been polluted by problems such as littering.


2. Each year, plastic waste in water and coastal areas such as Fiji kills up to 100,000 marine animals e.g. dolphins, 1 million sea birds, 1000s and 1000s fish (fish is one of the main sources of food for Fijians!).

Game:

Send the children on a litter pick and tell them to return when they have picked up 5 items each from the school grounds. When they return, take each item and ask the children to guess how long they think it would take for each one to disappear. Use this list as a rough guide:

• Newspaper: 6 weeks


• Cardboard: 2 weeks


• Orange peel: 2months


• Banana peel: 2-5 weeks


• Apple core: 2-5 weeks


• Wool sock: 1-5 years


• Plastic bag: 100 years


• Tin can: 50 years


• Disposable nappy: 450 years


• Plastic bottle: 450 years


• Fishing line: 600 years


• Glass: 1 million years


• Rubber tyre: infinity

Finish this game by making a poster of the items alongside the amount of time they take to degrade to put on display in the classroom.

Discussion:

Why is litter bad for wildlife? Explain how fish, whales, birds and other animals often mistake litter for food (show images). Why is this bad?:

1. Litter is mostly full of chemicals which can be poisonous and can kill.


2. When they eat the litter, these animals, fish etc believe they are full. However, the litter they think is food actually has no nutrients in it at all, so in fact they often starve to death despite thinking they are full.
   
   
   
   • Explain how in the South Pacific one of the consequences of litter has been what is sometimes called the ‘plastic ocean’. Currents are taking litter, predominantly plastic, to an area in the ocean that is hundreds of miles wide creating a plastic ocean which is dangerous to all living things.
   
   
   • Draw and explain this cycle:
   
   
   
   


3. A child drops a plastic bag in the Pacific


4. Currents cause this bag to join the other bits of plastic in the rubbish dump in the sea known as the plastic ocean.


5. Plankton comes along, mistakes this plastic bag for food, and eats little bits of it.


6. A small fish comes along and eats the plankton, which has eaten the plastic bag.


7. A medium-sized fish comes along and eats the small fish, which has eaten the plankton, which has eaten the plastic bag.


8. A big fish comes along and eats the medium-sized fish, which has eaten the small fish, which has eaten the plankton, which has eaten the plastic bag.


9. Along comes a human and catches the big fish for dinner. The human eats the big fish which has eaten the medium-sized fish, which has eaten the small fish, which has eaten the plankton, which has eaten the plastic bag. Plastic is poisonous- by throwing litter in the sea, not only are you harming wildlife, but the chances are you are harming yourself!

CONCLUSION:

Discussion:

What can we do to help reduce the amount of litter polluting land and water?

THE 3 R’s!

In English schools the 3R’s are Reading, wRiting and aRithmetics

In Green Club our 3 R’s will be far more interesting. They will be: Reduce (the best) Re-use (the funnest) Recycle (the hardest) Explain simply what these mean and that today we are going to try out Re-using, which is one of the funnest of the 3 R’s. Today we are going to make musical instruments out of litter, write a song about litter and then end with a performance!

PRACTICAL PART:

• Split the class into 2 groups, one to write a song with a litter
  theme, the other to make the instruments.


• Come together when all is made, get the song-writers to teach the
  song to the musical-makers. Then….perform! Get the rest of the school
  to come along if you can!

END:

Homework:

Ask the children to collect any soft plastic and rags they can find for next week’s lesson.

The end.