Online Collaborative Science Lesson Plan

The Earth Day Groceries Project

www.earthdaybags.org/gsprojdescription.htm

Curriculum Connection:
County created unit entitled Soils, Water and Wetlands that encourages stewardship for the environment.

Materials Needed:
Classroom computer, computer lab, “Earth Day Grocery Bag” poster- (50 copies provided free from the website), brown grocery bag for each student in the class or school -(provided by local grocery store), crayons and/or markers, digital camera or scanner.

Classroom Collaboration:
Students can work in teams or individually

Online Collaboration:
The website provides a PowerPoint presentation for teachers and students to explain the history of the project. Lesson plans and letters to parents and participating grocery stores are also available. The website posts anecdotal summaries of the school’s participation, provided by the teacher. They also will post up to three photos. The free posters could be given to individual students or whole classes to promote the project.

Lesson:

1. A school administrator contacts a local grocery store for brown grocery bags. These bags are then decorated and returned to the grocery store to be given out on Earth Day.
2. Students work in assigned groups to research and report on the history and rationale for Earth Day. Reports could be written or oral.
3. Groups may brainstorm ideas for decorating individual grocery bags. The website provides pictures of bags decorated by students and themes that would be appropriate. The entire class could visit the website in the computer lab to view the PowerPoint presentation.
4. Students decorate their bag with an environmental theme and the school’s name.
5. The teacher collects the bags and returns them to the grocery store before Earth Day.
6. The teacher may take pictures of some of the bags to send to the website.
7. The teacher sends an anecdotal email of the school’s participation to the site.
8. Students visit the site at a later date to see how other schools around the country and world celebrated “Earth Day”. They may also visit the local grocery store on Earth Day to see which bag they receive.

Evaluation:
Decorated grocery bags

Our entire school is participating in this event this year. I found this site while doing research for this project. Our administrator contacted the local Giant Foods and they donated 500 bags. The 50 free posters to promote the project and environmental awareness were delivered UPS within a week of ordering them.

Earth Day logo used with permission: Mark Ahlness Mark Ahlness

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