Third grade has been revisiting their environmental science standards at the end of this year.
S3L2. Students will recognize the effects of pollution and humans on the environment.
a. Explain the effects of pollution (such as littering) to the habitats of plants and
animals.
b. Identify ways to protect the environment.
• Conservation of resources
• Recycling of material
In the library, I pulled tons of environmental print books and made a pathfinder of ebooks, database resources, and websites around the environment.
We’ve also had guest speakers from The Seed and Plate What is The Seed and Plate?
We are an independent magazine in Athens, Ga. with a focus on food, farming and community in the Southeast. We hope to educate and inspire using our surroundings and the amazing people we’ve met along the way. We begin now as an online media publication, with an eye towards a print version in the future. Enjoy.
The Seed and Plate has been fantastic because they have presented to the students several times on composting, community farming, and being friendly to our earth. They have also supported students as they work on environmental projects and plan to give our students an outlet for publishing their work.
We’ve also hosted the Athens Clarke County Recycling Department to talk to the students about composting. Students have been using compost bins and paying attention to the amount of food that is being thrown away in our cafeteria. Since students are watching this closely, they are really starting to think about what we can do as a school to be friendly to our Earth.
After our exploration of print and digital resources as well as our guest speakers, I sent all of the resources into classrooms for students to continue using. Students chose a focus area to learn more about. Then, they came back to the library to learn about 3 options for final projects during the last week of school.
Option 1: Students could write a script with or without props and record it on our environmental Flipgrid.
Option 2: Students could use the Story Me app on the iPad to create a comic strip about their chosen topic.
Option 3: Students could create a blackout poem using text from a web resource or a copied page from an environmental book.
As I shared each option with students, I let them know what they would need to prepare in order to create their final product in one work session. For Flipgrid, students would need their scripts and prop. For Story Me, students would need drawings that they wanted to include in their comic and possible text that would go into speech bubbles written on post it notes. For blackout poetry, students needed to print the page from the web or have teachers copy a page from a book to use. Students spent 2 days in class preparing their materials.
Today, students came to the library with their materials ready. I gave one more quick overview of the projects and we designated areas for record, areas for coloring for blackout poetry, and areas for spreading out to take photographs for Story Me. The classroom teacher, Natalie Hicks (spectrum teacher), folks from The Seed and Plate, and I all walked around and helped students think through the process of creating their product.
Eventually, I stopped roaming around so that I could focus on collecting work from students. Each Story Me comic was saved to the camera roll on the iPad and then downloaded to a folder on my computer. Each blackout poem was photographed and downloaded to a separate folder. Flipgrids were automatically added to the online grid as students submitted.
The students were truly prepared when they came to the library today. This allowed them to really focus on putting together their final product rather than focus on trying to create all of the content. Students supported one another and adults were able to focus on students who needed extra support.
Now our work is ready to show to the world. We’re sharing it all with our new friends at The Seed and Plate to highlight on their website but we also have a gallery to share with you here.
Blackout Poetry:
Story Me Comics:
Expect the Miraculous 
Wow there has been some fierce learning about ways to protect the environment going on in this library. Well done to the 3rd Grade Students and their Awesome Teachers! I will be showing your fabulous project to some 3rd Grade Students (we called them Year 3 students) in our schools in the region of Cairns, Australia.
Thank you for reading and sharing my work in Australia. There are some amazing librarians there. Maybe one of these days I’ll make it all the way down to Australia. We had a lot of fun with this project, and I loved how it had an authentic audience and impact.