Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Why is litter a problem?

10 minutes

Find Out: Places that need our help

35 minutes

Take Action: Campaigning against the litterbugs!

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

Students will:

understand how litter can negatively impact our environment
identify a local litter hotspot, and create a campaign to address the litter at that site.

Students can:

give examples of strategies for preventing waste from getting into our environment
develop and communicate a campaign to raise awareness around a local litter hotspot.

Tune In: Why is litter a problem?

Step 1

Invite your students to form a discussion circle on the floor and display the first slide of the attached visual explainer. Ask your students: Why is litter a problem?

You may like to share the images on the slides with them to prompt discussion.

Suggested discussion points:

makes a mess that isn’t nice to look at
litter causes problems for our environment in several ways: pollutants and chemicals can leach out of the litter and can harm our plants and animals; some types of litter are sharp and dangerous (like broken glass or metal); some animals confuse litter with food and eat the litter (such as turtles eating plastic bags because they think the bag is a tasty squid), causing them to choke or ingest dangerous chemicals; animals can get entangled in the litter (such as in discarded fishing nets), and this can cause them to drown.

Step 2

Next, ask your students: How do we prevent litter from getting into our environment? What do you already do to stop litter from ending up in the environment?

Share the next set of images from the visual explainer with your students to prompt discussion. Encourage students to think about whether they use any of these things to reduce their waste and ask students how these things help everyone to reduce waste.

Suggested discussion points:

Put our rubbish in the right bin - many of the things we think of as waste can be turned into new products (like turning old paper into new paper, turning old plastic bottles into furniture or clothing, and turning old glass jars into new bottles or roads). If we put these products into the waste bin instead of into the recycling, they end up going to landfills where they can take years to decompose (see a list of breakdown rates on the attached visual explainer). This means we have to cut down new trees to make paper, make new plastic out of oil, or dig out more sand to make glass—using new materials to make these products has a greater negative impact on nature than making these products through recycling.
The other thing we can do is to not use things that could create litter (sometimes litter accidentally drops out of our pockets or gets blown out of the bin). This means avoiding things like single-use plastics (such as plastic bags, bottles or cutlery) and sticking with reusable ones instead.

Find Out: Places that need our help

Step 1

Explain to students that most of us are pretty good with our waste; we don’t like to litter because we know it’s the wrong thing to do. But if you have a look around the streets, you will probably see a few items of litter lying around.

Invite students to suggest some places in your neighbourhood or around your school where there is always litter lying around. Write these locations on the board. Older students could use a map to identify these locations.

If time permits or if the locations you have identified are on the school grounds, you could take a quick walk to observe whether there is litter at these sites at the moment.

Step 2

Choose a site to focus on as a class. You might like to encourage your students to think about which of the sites they have identified would have the greatest impact on people, animals or the surrounding environment if it was cleaned up. Students must be familiar with the site (they don’t need to know it intimately, but should at least have seen it) because they will be creating an awareness campaign to let people know about the litter problem that exists there.

Take Action: Campaigning against the litterbugs!

Step 1

Explain to students that they are now going to create a campaign to let people know that there is a problem with littering at the chosen site.

First, you need to think up a tagline for your campaign. This should be a catchy one-liner that grabs people's attention and lets them know straight away what you are talking about.

Spend some time brainstorming ideas for your tagline. Consider:

making it site-specific by referring to the location by name.
including details about the types of litter most commonly found.
making it personal by asking why YOU want this place cleaned up.

Here are some examples to inspire you for a:

park – Hilly Park is a place to play, not a place to leave your litter.
roadside – Take your litter for a ride and keep it in the car!
creek/beach – Plastic bag or dinner for a turtle? Keep your litter out of our creek/beach!
vacant lot – Even vacant lots deserve the chance to be beautiful.
schoolyard – Don’t be dim, put your _____ in the bin.

Year 3 Differentiation

Explain to students that according to research, there are people who wouldn’t dream of littering their own houses or gardens but think it’s ok to litter in a public place; they don’t believe they are responsible for the health and safety of the community or our environment. Other litterbugs believe that litter has no value, so it can just be thrown away. But as we have found out, many types of litter can be turned into new things, so it’s not true that it has no value! Invite students to include a message that targets one of the different types of litterbugs in your campaign. For example:

Just like you, fish like a clean home. Keep your cans out of our creek.
Your waste is too precious to waste! Save your plastic bottles for recycling, and build a cleaner future.

Step 2

Once your class has created your tagline, it’s time to decide how you want to communicate your message. Depending on time, you could:

create a colourful poster
create a short clip
stage a physical campaign (like the kids in this clip).

For students requiring extension, you could provide resources around waste and its impacts on our environment (e.g. books or online resources). Students could incorporate facts and tips about waste into their campaigns.

Step 3

Work with students to generate ideas about what you could do collectively, create a draft, and get feedback before creating your final version. If possible, provide students with an opportunity to share their message with a real audience (e.g. other students at your school or the wider community). This reinforces the message that the work and ideas that students have about creating a cleaner future are valid and important and may help to sow the seeds that inspire further action in the future.

For students requiring support, you could break the class into pairs and assign each group to a particular role in the campaign creation, adjusting the roles according to the age and ability of students.

Step 4

Extend your campaign by creating a Clean Up event for the site you have focused on. Find out more about how to create an event here.

Reflection

Depending on age or ability, you could invite students to have a discussion or record written responses to the following question:

If there’s no waste in the first place, then we won’t have to clean it up. What will you do to stop waste from getting into our environment?

Clean Up - Bugging The Litterbugs

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