Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

20 minutes	Part A: What waste do you make?
30+ minutes	Part B: Making a waste colour wheel (students will need to collect waste materials over the course of a week in order to complete this part of the lesson)
10 minutes	Reflection

Part A: What Waste do you Make?

Preparation:

Collect all your classroom waste for one day, including waste from student lunch boxes. Place a sheet or board on the floor of the classroom. You will use this to put your waste on.

Step 1.

Begin this lesson by inviting students to suggest what they understand by the term ‘waste’.

Suggest to students that we can think of waste as stuff we no longer want or need. Invite students to suggest what types of waste they might create in one day, and write a list of these items on the board. Encourage students to consider what types of waste they might have created:

in the morning at home (e.g. unwanted food and packaging)
in the classroom (e.g. old paper, old pens or pencils etc)
at recess or lunch (e.g unwanted food and packaging)
at home in the evening (e.g. unwanted food and packaging, anything else?)

Step 2.

Now explain to students that you collected the classroom waste for one day. Tip the waste onto your board or sheet, and using rubber gloves, sift through the waste. Analyse the waste according to the points below:

Where this waste comes from (what was it used for)?
What types of waste are the most common?
Could any of this waste be reused or recycled instead of being put in the rubbish bin?
What else do you notice about this waste?
What does this waste make you think about? What questions do you have about this waste?

Step 3.

Now explain to students that waste is a big problem, especially for our environment. Waste can get into our environment, harming animals, plants, soil and water. However, there are things we can do to limit the amount of waste that gets into our environment.

Invite students to discuss if they have heard of the 4Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Display the 4Rs Flashcards and use the points on the flashcards to talk about what the 4Rs mean.

Part B: Making a Waste Colour Wheel

Step 1.

Now explain that they will be spending the rest of this lesson focusing on ‘Reuse’ by looking at ways that waste materials can be used in an art project. Students will be asked to create a colour wheel in the class and then will have one week to find different coloured pieces of waste that match the colours on their colour wheel. They can then stick these pieces of waste to the outside of their colour wheel to make a waste colour wheel.

Display the following colour wheel images (images below are also available on the Colour Wheel Factsheet) and explain that a colour wheel shows us how colours are related. They help to remind us how to mix and think about colours.

Next share the images below with students and explain the different colour groups.

Primary colours - There are three primary colours: yellow, blue and red. In theory, you can mix and use these three colours to make all other colours. If you mix the three primary colours together, you would be able to make black.
Secondary colours - If you mix two primary colours together (such as red and yellow) you will get a secondary colour (orange). All secondary colours are made by mixing two primary colours. Secondary colours are the colours green, purple and orange. If you mix red and yellow you get orange, if you mix red and blue you get purple, and if you mix blue and yellow you get green.

Warm colours - Warm colours are made with red, orange and yellow, and any combinations of these colours, and similar colours. Warm colours tend to make you think of warm things, like heat or sunlight.
Cool colours - Cool colours are made of colours like green, blue and light purple. Cool colours can help you feel calm and cool, and make you think of things like water or the sky.

Complementary colours - Complementary colours are those that are opposite each other on the colour wheel. When these two colours are next to each other, both colours will appear brighter. Red and green are complementary colours, blue and orange are complementary colours, and purple and yellow are complementary colours.

Distribute copies either of the following blank colour wheel images to students or invite them to create their own. Using the image above as a support document (or the Colour Wheel Factsheet), guide students to colour in the segments of their colour wheel template in the correct way:

Foundation and Year 1: Colour wheel template - F & Yr 1
Year 2: Colour wheel template - Yr 2

Step 2.

Once complete, explain to students that they will have a week to collect a range of different waste materials from school and from home. At the end of the week, they can cut out and stick different colours from this waste onto the colour wheel, matching the colours as best they can.

Step 3.

Work with students to create a display at your school of class colour wheels and use this to share what you have learnt about waste and the 4Rs with other students and teachers at your school.

To extend this activity, you could repeat this exercise by finding colours in nature and adding actual items from nature to the wheel or by taking photos of items form nature, printing the photos and adding them to the colour wheel.

Reflection

Engage students in a class discussion around their waste colour wheels. Consider the following questions in your discussion:

What were the most common types of waste that they collected over the week?
Can may of the items on your waste colour wheel be recycled or reused?
Which colours were the easiest to find in the waste they collected?
Which were the hardest to find?
Why should we all be trying to find ways to reuse waste? (Suggested answers: Many of the things we put in the rubbish bin can be reused or recycled; not reusing or recycling them is a waste of natural resources like paper from trees, plastic from oil, metals from minerals and energy from coal. By using fewer natural resources we are also looking after our environment.)
What other things can we all do stop making waste? (Suggested answers: The most important thing we can do is to ask ourselves "Do I really need it?" E.g. Do I really need a plastic bag? Do I really need to buy that thing in all that packaging? By not using so much stuff, we will make less waste and use fewer natural resources.)

Take it further

Invite students to think about some of the other ways they could use the waste materials they found in art projects, for example: Reusing Waste Activities.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn’t work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Creative Sustainability - The Colours of Waste

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