Go Green Update
February 2016
What are you doing to promote green school initiatives in your classroom?
Butterfly Professional Development
Upcycling Collection
We will also continue to collect cereal bags in the school lobby during February.
Thanks for upcycling!!!
Big Cats Project
Westy Wear Swap!
Recycling at WTES
Grade Level Projects
K - Outdoor classroom
1st - Upcycling crayons
2nd - Bluebird boxes
3rd - In addition to the rotting log garden, all third grade students are researching an endangered animal. Included in this research is how people can get involved to save these endangered animals. In Library, they will make presentations using their research. Mrs. Steffen's class is also observing the bird feeder by the playground. They have visuals, binoculars, and a record sheet to record their observations. So far, they haven't seen much bird activity.
4th - Butterfly garden
5th - Raingarden
Go Green Graph!
In order to keep "green" on all of our minds, we will have a graph in the lobby to keep track of green school activities by grade level. If you send us documentation of a green activity, we will add a block on the bar graph. We will also add your ideas to the list above so that we can all learn from each other. Let's help each other achieve the schoolwide goal of maintaining green school status!
You can e-mail a picture of students working or a student work sample along with a short description of the activity to one of the green team members. We will save it to the shared drive for you.
Examples of Activities:
* Last year, Gretchen's class had an in-class lunch one day where they laid out four posters on the floor for 1) recycling, 2) upcycling, 3) compost, 4) and (finally) trash. Everyone ate lunch together with whatever they had brought or bought from the cafeteria, and then at the end of lunch, they all talked about their waste and on what poster it belonged. Students were amazed to see how the items piled up, which pile had the most, and how much of their lunch didn't actually need to be thrown away. (I know we can't compost at the school, but it was still a lesson about what is biodegradable.)
*An environmental connection in ELA (Sarah distributed a resource to help find these lessons)
*Upcycle in your classroom.
*Use the butterfly garden, native garden, rotting log garden, or rain garden to teach your class.
*Water dance
*Write to inform or writing to persuade assignments pertaining to an environmental issue.
*Use upcycled and recycled materials for an activity. For example, K has the kids use recycled materials to make Native American and pilgrim outfits for their Thanksgiving celebration. 2nd grade used to do a cereal box book report.
*Create a "no mow" zone.
*Stencil storm drains.
*Oyster project
*Watch the video Karen shared on Edmodo to teach us what she learned at the butterfly workshop.
*Water conservation
*The green team is going to coordinate a Westy wear swap at a PTA event.
*The green team asked the school store coordinators if they could sell reusable snack bags and cotton reusable napkins with the WTES logo. The Westy Wear PTA contact from the PTA is going to look into getting reusable bags to sell.
Janice Stout
Sarah De Felice
Karen Kuebler
Michelle Huber
Terri Mohr