WE TOO CAN MAKE WAVES Western Coventry s Green Team Western Coventry Elementary School Western Coventry, Rhode Island Advisor: Kerri Luchka Video Project: We Too Can Make Waves April 2017
SUMMARY Western Coventry s Green Team kicked off the year with a great honor as the recipient of the Rhode Island Agri-Science Award and was invited to attend the Eastern States Exposition for our work in starting a community garden as part of a Green Team initiative. All the members of the 2016 and 2017 Green Team attended with pride. What a great way to get motivated to get back into the garden as it was time again to harvest the 2017 garden which yielded purple potatoes, carrots, onions, radishes and flower varieties. From there, we decided to quickly get to work on problems facing our school community especially with RECYCLING! So many things were not being properly recycled or placed in the correct bins which lead to more trash! We created informational videos, held poster contests and sponsored Saver s recycling drives. 2016 and 2017 Green Team at the BIG E!
SUMMARY (CONTINUED) In our research, we found that plastic bags pose an interesting problem in that we can t throw them in the trash or in the recycling bins. Green Team, as well as the Fifth Grade, repurposed the bags by crocheting them into mats for the homeless. It s still our mission to BAN the BAG in Coventry and we are inching closer! To help communicate our message, goals and events, we send a Newsletter out to the community every trimester. We shifted gears in the winter to educate others of the importance of energy efficiency, and with the help of National Grid, supplied lightbulbs, low-flow shower heads and plug-strips to our local community. Back in the classroom, we held an Energy Expo to educate our peers about the many energy transformations. Green Team kicked off Earth Day early this year, with its annual Family Movie Night. This year we presented on recycling and showed WALL-E! Every family who attended could pre-order seeds from our very own Western Garden! Spring is a busy time as we are organizing clean ups, promoting gardening and awareness through seed sales and inspiring our school community to make waves!
EXTRA! EXTRA! GREEN TEAM NEWS Goal: Educate the Western Community about energy consumption, green practices and to keep our community informed and encourage involvement in our mission. Activities and Tasks: Inform community about successes of our gardens. Educate community about Energy Resources. Advertise Green Team events such as the Saver s Recycling Drive. Update community about our Green Team Initiatives such as recycling and repurposing plastic bags. Evaluation: Achievement of this goal was evident in written summaries that were reviewed and published by our team advisor. There was also positive feed back and more seed sales after our publication reached our intended audience. Student Leadership: We hoped to reach all of the members of our Western Community with our newsletter. Each member of the Green Team had a special assignment. We needed to make sure we each did our parts to make our publication a success! Resources: NEED Elementary Energy Infobook NEED Energy Sources Online Resources
GROWING AWARENESS OF THE BENEFITS OF LOCALLY GROWN FOOD Goal: Keep the Western Garden growing and raise awareness in the importance/benefits of locally grown foods. Activities and Tasks: We know that kids can make a difference with each choice we make. We try to practice what we preach by reducing our ecological foot print and energy consumption. We planted a vegetable garden in the spring, take on watering duties during the summer and harvest each fall. The fall harvest includes vegetables and seeds. The vegetables are donated and the we sell the seeds. Locally grown foods reduce the amount of transportation fuels needed and emissions that are produced. Our goal is to keep the gardens growing and raise awareness in the community of the importance of supporting locally grown foods. Student Leadership: Green Team members helped to plant the garden and care for it. Green Team members sold seeds at the Green Team sponsored movie night to kick off Earth Day in an effort to raise awareness of the benefits of buying local and the benefits of planting community gardens. Green Team members sold Western Coventry grown seeds to members of the community. Resources: The Scituate High School NEED Club provides us with many plants for our gardens. NEED Fossil Fuel to Products Evaluation: Beautiful gardens that yield food and seeds. Over $200 raised from seed sales that will help us to keep our gardens growing as well as raising awareness of the benefits of locally grown foods.
PROJECT: RECYCLE! Goals: Educate the community in good recycling practices as well as to advocate for recycling to reduce wasting our natural resources as well as reducing air and water pollution. Activities and Tasks: We organized a poster contest for all of the students in K-5 at Western Coventry. The poster s theme was recycling and students had to identify what goes in the bin and what goes in the garbage. To get students to participate we offered prizes and made sure that each grade level had a winner. We created paper slide videos for every grade level that educated students with what goes in the green bin and what goes in the trash. Held a Saver s Recycle Drive to keep unwanted items from getting tossed in the trash. Saved on fossil fuels by organizing an event at the school where every one in the local community could drop off any unwanted item and we took only one trip to the donation center. This event also raised money to help support the Green Teams mission. Operation BAN the BAG! Have the community donate plastic bags so that students could repurpose them into mats for the homeless. This theme was also tied into the Green Team s Family Movie Night with the film WALL-E. Resources: NEED Talking Trash Student Leadership: Plan poster contest, write up flyers and devise a fair way of judging posters. Students use technology to create a paper slide video teaching other children how to recycle. This requires that we research the guidelines for recycling in our state because even we were confused about some things! Organize, advertise and volunteer at the Saver s Recycle Drive. Plan strategies to prevent plastic bags from being tossed in the trash or in the recycle bins, find a way to reuse them, think about strategies to get them banned from our town. Prepare a presentation about the importance of evaluating our relationship with garbage to present on Family Movie night. Evaluation: 80 Families participated in the What to Recycle Poster Contest yielding winners at every grade level. We sorted and devised a way to judge each poster and make every participant feel recognized for their efforts. The paper slide videos teaching how to recycle at school made it clear what to or what not to put in the recycle bin. There were many misconceptions even we had some! The Saver s Recycle Drive was a success as we saved over 5,158 pounds of unwanted items from being tossed in the trash. We also raised over $700 to help realized the vision of Green Team s goals. The second recycle drive is in May! Just think how much more we can collect a possible 10,000 pounds of junk! We learned to crochet plastic bags and we created 10 mats for the homeless.
PROJECT: RECYCLE! Paper Slide Videos Operation BAN the BAG
PROJECT: RECYCLE! Planning Recycling Poster Contest
PROJECT: RECYCLE! Goal: Saver s Recycle drive will reduce the amount of trash from the landfill. Saver s will reuse the items and we will raise some funds to realize the goals of our team! Activities: Promote/advertise the drive and volunteer at the event to help people unload their cars. Resources: NEED Talking Trash Truck Student Leadership: We would have to greet all of our customers in a respectful helpful manner. Promote recycling through flyers. Evaluation: We collected 5,158 pounds of junk! Raised $700 and was met with a very positive response from our community! They wanted to know when we were holding the next event!
The World is a better place because of you. GREEN TEAM EARTH DAY EVENT: FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT Goal: To promote recycling and an overall appreciation for our planet Earth! Motivate our community to do more for the environment. Activities: Plan a motivating presentation. Make sure paper slide videos are ready to show. Create and distribute flyers. Encourage students and families to reuse their recyclables by creating a Recycle-bot! Resources: NEED Talking Trash Video, Projector, Computer, PA System, Microphone Student Leadership: We would have to greet all of our families and thank them for coming. Distribute seed sale flyers. Seven Green Team members to present our presentation. Evaluation: About 75 Western Families attended. The feedback was great and there were over 50 Recycle-bots on display. It was a wonderful experience by all.
GREEN TEAM EARTH DAY EVENT: FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT Our Project Made the Local News!
ENERGY EXPO PART ONE Goal: To learn about the Science of Energy Sources and Forms of Energy. Activities and Tasks: We set up stations that involved learning about elastic potential energy to motion energy, the different forms and sources of energy, chemical potential energy to thermal energy, radiant energy to electrical energy, radiant energy to thermal energy, chemical potential energy to electrical energy, motion to electrical energy, electrical energy to motion, and chemical potential energy to radiant energy. Student Leadership: Working together as a team to achieve this learning goal was essential. Team leaders were established and then we delegated roles contingent upon the activity. Resources: The NEED Science of Energy Kit Preparing Evaluation: Achievement of this goal was evident in science notebooks and Google Slides that we developed to teach others. Our Google Slides were evaluated using a rubric.
ENERGY EXPO PART TWO Goal: To host an Energy Expo for fifth grade students at Western Coventry Elementary School. Activities and Tasks: We organized nine stations that showed many forms of energy and energy transformations. The stations set up involved learning about elastic potential energy to motion energy, the different forms and sources of energy, chemical potential energy to thermal energy, radiant energy to electrical energy, radiant energy to thermal energy, chemical potential energy to electrical energy, motion to electrical energy, electrical energy to motion, and chemical potential energy to radiant energy. Student Leadership: In teams of one or two, we facilitated an energy station and presented to our fellow fifth grade friends. We learned all the science of energy in advance so that we were able to teach our peers. The Green Team facilitated the learning throughout the Energy Expo. We taught three fifth grade classes reaching 66 students over the course of one day (We each taught our station 36 times and we were exhausted by the end!) Resources: The resources we used were the NEED Science of Energy Kits that were supplied by Scituate High School. One other important resource was the NEED Energy Expo e-publication. Evaluation: Achievement of this goal, was evidenced in our own very successful Energy Expo and by the work captured in the fifth grade student s science notebooks. Energy phenomena captured the students curiosity and more questions asked!
HOUR CONTRIBUTED BY WESTERN S GREEN TEAM Task Number of Hours Number of People Participating Total Number of Hours Total Number of People Reached Team Meetings Before School/Recess 40 22 880 22 Planting/Caring and Harvesting Gardens 15 22 330 350 Honorary Green Team Members Gardening Time 2 55 110 440 Project Recycle Paper Slides, Poster Contest, BAN the BAG Independent Research and Writing Articles for Green Team Publications 10 22 220 350 8 10 80 350 Preparation and Execution of the Energy Expo 10 66 660 66 Film: You To Can Make Waves 5 60 300 Unknown Saver s Donation Drives 8 20 160 150 Green Team s Family Movie Night/Recycle-Bots (Article in the Coventry Currier) 5 22 110 575+ Seed Sales 3 22 66 100 National Grid Fundraiser 5 15 75 50 Total: 2,352 1,878