We would like to share the letter that we have sent out to a few
other schools and placed on a teacher bulletin board. This explains
what our project is about and how you can get involved. Thank
you.:-)
Michael Petersen 501 6th Street Coralville, IA 52241 USA e-mail: petersenm@iowa-city.k12.ia.us
Dear Teacher and Students,
How would you like to make a difference in the world today? We are doing a project on recycling. It will consist of collecting data from schools that recycle and recording the data to keep on a web page. This way we can inform people about recycling, help teach people about recycling, and other schools may join in on the fun.
Do you want to know how you can help? You can start recycling and/or be part of a world wide recycling project. We would like to explain how the fifth graders at Coralville Central recycle. The fifth graders at Coralville Central Elementary School are in charge of a school wide recycling project. Each fifth grader has an assigned room(s) that they are in charge of. All classrooms including special classes like art, music, library, physical education, etc., have a designated recycling container (a cardboard box) which they recycle office paper, newspaper, magazines, and cardboard in. We can recycle almost any colors of paper, except for real dark or real bright fluorescent paper. Every Friday the fifth graders pick up the box(es) from their assigned room(s). They bring it to their classroom, weigh it, and record the information on a data sheet. Then they sort it into large containers (we use 30 gallon garbage cans) labeled Office Paper, Newspaper, Magazines, and Cardboard. There is also a garbage can labeled "Trash" for the non-recyclable materials that might be in the boxes.
After that, they weigh the box when it's empty and subtract that from the total weight. (Here's a tip. We write the weight of the recycling box on the bottom of the box so we don't have to weigh it each time.) This gives the weight of the paper that each class recycled for the week. Finally our teacher takes it down to a local recycling center to recycle it.
When the students are separating and putting the different types of paper in the trash can containers, they also look for paper that has only one side written/typed on. This paper is placed in the work room where teachers can re-use it. They use it for daily worksheets and scratch paper in their rooms. This also helps by using the paper on both sides before it is recycled.
The weight of paper recycled is recorded in a data base for each classroom. Whenever a classroom reaches 118 pounds of recycled paper (which is equal to one tree) they are given a small tree. They can decide what they would like to do with the tree, such as plant that tree somewhere on the school grounds, or giving it to someone in their room to take home and plant. Weekly records are kept for the whole school. Each room's amount is recorded and kept on file in the fifth grade classroom and we share them with the school regularly throughout the year.
We would like to expand this to other schools throughout the world. If you already recycle, or would like to start recycling, you could become part of out project also. We would like to have other schools join us in this recycling effort. For you to become part of this project you just need to have a recycling project (or start one) similar to ours. Then collect the data from your school and send it to us. We will compile all of the data from every school that sends us information. We will post this data on a web page and update it every other week. You can then see the results from your school and the other schools that are participating. This will be a fun and interesting way for people to recycle and see how many trees can be saved through our combined efforts. (If your community doesn't recycle all of these materials, you can recycle just those materials that you can recycle and send us the information on those.)
Currently the URL for our site is :
http://www.iowa-city.k12.ia.us/Schools/CorCentral/link.pages/recycle.html (This is the page that is on our school web site that we keep updated.)
If you are interested in sharing information please notify us at the address above. We will ask for your data after every collection. We will be putting this information on a web page starting February. Please send us your data as soon as possible. We would like two schools from every state. Thank you for your time and effort.
Your friends from Coralville Central,
Chloe, Lindsay, Kelly, Brittany, Alison, Mr. Petersen
Go to ThinkQuest
Jr. Homepage
Here are links to all of our other cool recycling pages: