Solid Waste: Is There a Solution?
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS
Toxic Waste: A Teaching Simulation
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Program Overview
The National Geographic Kids Network series is a telecommunications-based program for grades 3-9 that emphasizes collaborative student research on real-world issues. The series includes 7 units for grades 3-6 and 9 units for grades 6-9. Each unit includes a kit and an 8-week telecommunications package.
Telecommunications-Based Unit
Recommended grade level:
3-6.
In Too Much Trash?, an 8-week telecommunications-based curriculum unit, students explore the environmental impact of trash while learning data analysis and mathematical skills. Students classify trash, investigate how their school and community manage trash, estimate the total weight of the trash discarded daily by the entire class, and explore ways to reduce the amount of the trash they generate. Then, through the National Geographic SocietyKids Network--a computer network that links students around the world doing the same unit--they share data and information on trash generation and disposal with students in different parts of the world. They graph the data and look for patterns and correlations. In a final activity, students develop a presentation to share their findings with an audience outside their classroom. Activities incorporate science, geography, social studies, language arts, mathematics, and statistics.
Throughout the unit, students use computers and software (called NGS Works) to record information, write letters, make graphs, display maps, and send data to other network participants. They also consult electronically with a scientist about the data they collect.
Too Much Trash? includes a teacher's guide, reproducible readings and activity sheets, overhead transparencies, posters, wall maps, and a diskette of supplemental information to use with the NGS Works software.
Key to Content Standards: 5-8 (see app. C)
UNIFYING CONCEPTS AND PROCESSES: Systems, order, and organization; evidence, models, and explanation; change, constancy, and measurement.
SCIENCE AS INQUIRY: Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry; understandings about scientific inquiry.
PHYSICAL SCIENCE: Properties and changes of properties in matter.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: Abilities of technological design; understandings about science and technology.
SCIENCE IN PERSONAL AND SOCIAL PERSPECTIVES: Populations, resources, and environments; natural hazards; risks and benefits; science and technology in society.
HISTORY AND NATURE OF SCIENCE: Science as a human endeavor; nature of science.
Prices:
Curriculum unit (ISBN 0-7922-4072-3), $149.
NGS Works software, $199. (Contact NGS regarding membership fees for accessing NGS Kids Network.)
Publisher/supplier:
National Geographic Society.
Materials:
Available from commercial suppliers, or in kit.
