Earth Day ActivitiesThe Green Team planned a bunch of Earth Day activities and events that we carried out at school. The students were so excited to have everyone involved! Poster Contest and Coloring ContestDuring the month of April, we had an environmental poster contest for the older grades and a color contest for the upper grades. You can see the one of the winners below for the poster contest. We had about 20 great entries. We were overwhelmed with the amount of entries in our coloring contest. We narrowed about 150 entries down to some of our favorites and then picked the top 5 as our winners. Teacher Environmental Lesson ContestTo encourage our teachers to teach environmental lessons in April, we also had a contest for teachers. Teachers were asked to fill out a google form and submit their lessons, photos and artifacts. We had a lot of great entries. You can see the entries here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fyfDe6vj8D5yXuBY8doj5DzYP3efIYvVv7Mq381_2H0/edit?usp=sharing. I also included some photos of some of the artifacts that were submitted. Teachers were entered into a drawing for a $25 gift card. Congrats to Mr. P for his lesson about angles in nature! PowerDown DayWe held our first PowerDown day at the end of April. Teachers were asked to reduce energy use in their classrooms for one day and we monitored the energy use both through BGE and classroom checks. Teachers were asked to use natural light, close their doors to keep in their AC, limit use of technology and be sure to shut down all devices when not in use. The Green Team stopped by classrooms and completed these checklists. We awarded prizes to the classes seen conserving the most energy. The hallways were a bit darker that day but there was lots of learning going on. And based on a records from BGE we showed a lot of energy conservation compared to a day last April with the same temperature. It was a great success! Green Team PresentationsThe Green team was very excited to present to our Pre-K and K classes about recycling. The students wanted to remind the younger students about the importance of recycling and what can and cannot be recycled in school. You can see their presentation here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ICvcNPtjAXv8JZ6Bu4q2cFhi5xtu-1x9/view?usp=sharing We also included some photos. The teachers reported that they all did a great job! PowerDown DayWe also hosted our first PowerDown Day in April. We hung signs throughout the building and tried to get everyone involved. We were so excited to see so many classes participating. The hallways were a little darker that day and lots of blinds were open! The Green Team went around and did energy checks on the classes and awarded a prize to the class conserving the most energy. We also checked our BGE bill and were happy to see quite a difference in energy usage that day compared to another last April with a similar temperature. You can see some of our Energy Checklists here. ReThink Waste SignWe worked on our ReThink Waste sign for a long time and were so excited when it finally got hung in the cafeteria. It was made entirely from waste the students collected such as wine corks, used tissue paper from a children's birthday party, newspaper, plastic bags, pouch and bottle tops, Styrofoam packaging and scraps of string. They had so much fun making it and were so proud of their work. It was such a hit in the cafeteria! SciTech Field TripWe also visited SciTech this month to learn about rain gardens. The students enjoyed being able to write all their learning on the table. They learned about the effects of pollution on the bay and how rain gardens can help. Then they went into the science lab to test their theories on what would be needed in a rain garden to best filter the water. Upcoming Trip- Anita Leight Estuary CenterIn June, we will be visiting the Anita Leight Estuary to go on a Pontoon Boat, net fishing and for a hike. We are very excited for this to be our end of the year event!
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Energy PostersAfter researching tips on energy conservation, students created signs to hang near the light switches throughout the school as a reminder to turn off lights and conserve energy. Rethink WasteWe began working on our "Rethink Waste" campaign. We first watched a few videos and read some articles about rethinking waste. They focused on limiting the amount of single use plastic and reducing the amount of waste we create. After doing some research, the students shared their learning on a padlet so that we could all talk about what everyone learned. We then talked about different ways we could share our learning with the school community and decided to create an art installation out of recycled materials to showcase during the month of April for Earth Day. We brainstormed a list of items that would otherwise be waste and started to collect them to create our art piece. Students began designing large letters to spell the phrase "Rethink Waste." Students first began by working with a partner to decide how to design their letters. Then during their lunch times, they came in to start putting their plan into action. We are so excited to share our finished project next month along with some tips on reducing waste. Earth Day Month of ActionWe decided we really wanted to get the whole school community involved in thinking about the earth during the month of April. So we began brainstorming some ideas. You can see the list of all the ideas we came up with for the month of April. We narrowed it down to 3 big events. We are excited to share all our fun events next month! Recycling EffortsWe also continue to enhance our recycling program at PPPCS. This year, we noticed that we had no recycling cans in the cafeteria. We purchased large ones specifically for bottles and cans in the cafeteria. Unfortunately, they quickly filled up with non-recyclable trash! We worked more on sharing their purpose with both staff and students. Walker shared some reminders about recycling at school over the morning announcements as well.
This year we have 21 4th graders on our Green Team. We started the year by coming up with some action plans. First, the students worked as partners to develop some action items and then we worked together to come up with some overall goals. We would like to increase awareness about recycling and energy conservation at our school and in our community. We also want to be more involved in trash clean up in Patterson Park. We hope to learn more about water pollution and prevention. We hope to develop some additional recycling stations are our school for markers, crayons, and electronics. You can see our action plans here. We also began research on ways to conserve energy. We used google classroom to watch some videos and explore some websites and began compiling a list of ways to conserve energy. We plan to make posters for our school community, and share these on the announcements each week. You can see some examples below.
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