Sustainable Living Field Trip to Hofstra

During the first two weeks of March, Hofstra University had a sustainable living exhibit. The sixth graders from Roosevelt Children's Academy took a trip to the exhibit one Thursday morning. We learned so much!  We learned about reusable containers and how they help our environment. We learned about composting and the purpose of the worms in compost. We got to hold worms in our hands, look at the picture! We each planted our own vegetable seed to take home with us. They also gave us two plants to care for at our school. We read books about going green, we learned how much energy we could save by bicycling to and from school and we learned so much more. It was a great morning and we are so happy we went. We thank Hofstra for allowing us this opportunity and helping us with this learning experience!

 

   

Sixth Graders at Roosevelt Children’s Academy Simulate a Landfill!

The sixth grade students here in Roosevelt were very confused about what happened to our garbage. The students felt that they threw away so much garbage a day and they did not understand what happened to it all. In technology class with Ms. Gallo the students were asked to bring in some garbage that they would normally throw out. Students brought in plastic bottles, paper dishes, cardboard boxes, plastic silverware, juice pouches, cookie wrappers, an old tee-shirt, clothing tags, and a broken cell phone, lots of paper, pens and pencils. Ms. Gallo brought in food items including a school breakfast, a school lunch, chicken bones, carrots, cucumbers and old cold cuts. We then put all of this garbage in a plastic container. We got some free dirt from a neighbor of our school; we covered the garbage with dirt, closed the container and put it out back. We plan to check back with our landfill in a few months to see what has decomposed and what hasn’t.

Waverly Park - It's Easy Being "Green"

While many schools on Long Island are beginning to jump on the "Go Green" band wagon, Waverly Park is one school that started the trend.  Our youngest students learn the basics, such as soda can recycling.  Our 5th graders learn about ways to reduce their carbon footprints.  They each trace their foot on paper, then choose one way to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions and write it on the footprint to display. 

Several years ago, during Ecology Week, our Science teacher, Susan Lindner, decided we needed to stop throwing out used water bottles.  She contacted the East Rockaway sanitation department and arranged to have our empties picked up on a scheduled day.  Since then, all our classes collect their used bottles on a weekly basis and bring them to the recycle can in the school kitchen every Friday afternoon.  Early on Monday mornings, the East Rockaway recycling truck stops by to pick them up.  In fact, when Waverly 5th graders moved up to the middle school, they were shocked to discover that water bottles were being thrown away!  They took it upon themselves to speak to administrators and make the changes that they had already become accustomed to in their former elementary school.  We are hoping that next year we can have a fund raiser and have students purchase reusable water bottles.  This will drastically cut down on the waste that water bottles create, not to mention the amount of fossil fuels it takes to make and recycle them. 

Last year our school had a fund raiser to encourage students to buy eco-friendly cloth lunch/snack bags. Buying colorful T-shirts with pictures of tropical animals were all the rage in an effort to collect funds for a "Save the Rain Forest" event.  We have been collecting used batteries and ink cartridges and sending them out for recycling.  Last year we instituted white paper recycling throughout the entire school.  We now found out that we can recycle any kind of paper.  This year we initiated Save a Watt Day, when all classes shut off their lights and computers when not needed, in order to save energy use for the school district .  The students themselves have suggested that every day can be Save a Watt day, and this has been quite successful.  We are planning to compare our energy bills from March through June of this year to next year's.  So, as you can see, "Going Green" at Waverly Park is "going strong." 

Waverly Students Keeping You (Com) Posted

Students at Waverly Park Elementary School have started a compost program.  Science teacher, Susan Lindner, asked some of our 5^th grade students to speak to all the classes about the value of  composting—how it can help reduce garbage, reuse plant material and recycle organic matter back into the soil.  Students then created a large Compost Do’s and Don’ts poster to display over the compost pail at lunchtime.  Students from Grades 1-5 contribute vegetable and fruit leftovers, as well as peels, stems, cores, and rinds.  On different days of the week, at the end of the lunch period, student volunteers take turns bringing the pail outside and depositing the materials in our compost pile.  The materials will eventually decay and become the dark soil material we call compost.  The compost from this pile will be used to enrich the soil of the plants in our 9/11 garden.  It will also create a habitat for the worms that we will feed our school box turtle,

Franklin

 

 

 

Earth Day Activities 2009

 

 Our class had a very productive and exciting Earth Day this year!  The goal was to provide a variety of interdisciplinary activities for the students to participate in, with the idea that Earth Day should not only be a one day celebration but something that we focus on in our every day lives.  Our class created bumper stickers to raise awareness.  Each student planted flower seeds which will be given as mother's day gifts in May.  We also talked about their carbon footprints, using the website www.kidsfootprint.org , which is a great interactive website for kids (I used my proxima projector and did it as a whole class lesson).  The students then wrote an informative essay about how they can leave a positive footprint on the Earth.  

The students started a recycling center in our classroom, with bins to recycle both paper and plastic. Finally, the students participated in interdisciplinary Earth Day learning centers: math center where they had to graph data for recycling rates of various materials in the United States, reading comprehension center where they had to read a non-fiction piece about a community that recyles and then answer various questions, a science center where the students had to find the volume and mass of a cup of "polluted" water, and a technology center where the students watch a Brain Pop (www.brainpop.com) video about the three c's (conserve, clean up, chime in) and completed a graphic organizer.  Those ideas were used later to create the bumper stickers.