Third Grade Lesson

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Grade: Third Grade
Standard: S3L2. Students will recognize the effects of pollution and humans on the environment.
Objective: Students will identify the effects of pollution on marine life.
Materials:
Procedure:

1. Show general turtle video to spark excitement.
2. Ask students what animals need to survive? Food, air, water, shelter
3. Review different types of habitats. Where do animals live?
4. Ask students if they think humans make this difficult for animals sometimes.
5. Show students the litter video
6. Ask if they think this litter is dangerous for sea life.
7. Show photos of marine life tangled up in plastic.
8. Say to students, “I wonder if the animals in our neighborhood, even the tiniest animals that we don’t see, are affected by our trash?”
9. Choose a paper sized grassy area on school grounds and have students investigate with a magnifier and record what they see - they can draw and write. Then take a picture.
10. Anchor a piece of paper on the same grassy area. The paper represents human litter and the grassy area is a habitat.
11. Leave the paper for two weeks, remove, and repeat step 7.
12. Compare and contrast the differences.
13. Develop a plan to help clean up the area so that the organisms in the area are more likely to survive. Publicize the plan and write letters to encourage others to help.
14. Test plan by counting litter before and after plan. Did it work? If not, what can we do? If so, HURRAY! Are there more people I can convince?
Closure: Students now know that litter can be very dangerous for animals as far away as Australia. They may decide to be a scientist (like in the video) that helps animals when they grow up and they can start now by helping the animals in their neighborhood.

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