Activity
Environmental Science Bulletin Board
Ideas for creating a bulletin board about environmental science for students who are blind or visually impaired.
This bulletin board was created as part of a larger unit on environmental science with students in the Secondary Program at Perkins School for the Blind. Students collected trash items that were found around the school campus and sorted them into categories of paper and plastic.
Learning objectives:
- Identify that recycling is the process of reclaiming and reusing raw materials.
- Examine visually/tactually samples of metal, plastic, glass and paper accurately identifying each material.
- Discuss and list several reasons to recycle including saving money, using fewer natural resources and reducing environmental damage.
Materials
- paper bags for collecting trash items
- safety goggles and gloves
- long-handled grabber for picking up hard to reach items.
- baggies
- print and braille labels to display items on bulletin board
Procedure
- After discussing the concepts above, walk around the school campus and collect littered items. Ask for sighted assistance as needed to locate items.
- Wear goggles and gloves and use long handles grabber as needed to pick up items.
- Identify what the items are (e.g. candy wrapper, newspaper, etc.).
- Place the items in bags to take them back to the classroom.
- Talk about the different types of recyclables found, and discuss reasons why people may have left these items on the ground.
- Sort the items into categories (paper, plastic, metal, etc.).
- Create a bulletin board with examples of different types of recyclables, encouraging people to recycle, not litter!
Variations
- Students can create a graph showing which types of trash were most common.
- This experiment could be done at regular intervals to note whether the same types of litter are always the most common.
- Students could develop a public awareness campaign to educate people on campus about litter.
- Students could participate in a recycling program on campus.
NGSS Standards:
ESS3.C
Human impacts on Earth systems: Sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources, including the development of technologies.
By Kate Fraser
Return to Accessible Science main page.
