Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What do we know about recycling?

20 minutes

Find Out: Separating materials

10 minutes

Take Action: Using physical properties to separate materials

10 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

understand that there are recyclable and non-recyclable materials
understand how to categorise materials according to their physical properties.

Success criteria

Students can:

classify materials into recyclable and non-recyclable categories
identify one physical property of a particular material that can be used to separate it from other materials
apply their knowledge about materials to design a way to separate recyclable materials.

Tune In: What do we know about recycling?

Step 1

In the previous lesson (What is Plastic?), we looked at the many different types of plastic. Ask your students, “When plastic breaks, or we no longer need it, which bin do we put it in?” This may spark some discussion as it can be difficult to figure out, and different councils have different rules. Let’s explore this further.

Step 2

Screen this clip for the class:

Visy – what to put in your household recycling bin(youtube.com/watch?v=qa0RN0yo7BU)

Ask students to respond to the prompts below in writing (prompts also available on the Student Worksheet):

one thing in this clip that was surprising or interesting
one thing I didn’t understand
any terms used that I didn’t know
one thing that reminded me of something that I already know.

Guide students in a quick class discussion to share their ideas.

Step 3

Invite students to apply their understanding of recyclable/non-recyclable materials by engaging in a hands-on sorting activity. Ask students to stand in a circle and place two bins in the centre of the circle – one labelled 'Recycle' and the other 'Landfill'.

/icon If your school has a specific colour-coded bin system (e.g. separate bins for paper, co-mingled recycling, green waste, etc), use bins that match your school's system to reinforce the system.

Provide each student with a piece of common schoolyard waste, for example, a sandwich bag or snack wrapper, and invite them to quickly discuss with the person next to them whether they think their item can be recycled and which bin it should go into.

Going around the circle, invite each pair to share which bin they will place their item in. Then, ask the rest of the class to indicate whether they agree by showing thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs sideways if they’re unsure. Invite volunteers to share the reasons for their views. Once a decision has been reached, the student can place their item in the ‘right’ bin.

Think you know your recycling? See if you can Put a Grin on Your Recycling Bin (visy.education/) with Visy’s interactive recycling game.

Find Out: Separating materials

Step 1

Inform students that one of the major challenges the recycling industry faces is ensuring that recyclables are sorted properly so they can be recycled. Explain that various techniques are used to do this. One way is to use the physical property of materials. A physical property is a characteristic that can be observed or measured with one of your five senses. For example, a physical property of steel is magnetism, so steel objects can be separated from non-steel objects using a magnet.

Step 2

Invite students to read through and match the list of physical properties with the correct description Student Worksheet.

Then, ask them to form small groups to confer their answers.

Learning support: Students could work through the list in pairs or complete this activity as a whole class.

Step 3

Let’s explore how the different physical properties are used to separate recyclable materials. Show your students the following clip:

Visy – what happens to your household recycling (youtube.com/watch?v=yXSmINKUOxg)

Invite students to apply their understanding of physical properties by viewing the following clips and the associated diagrams. Each clip shows material being separated at a Materials Recovery Facility. Ask students to use the space in the Student Worksheet to identify how this method uses the physical properties of the materials to separate them.

Presort (vimeo.com/265482545/0b46c291be)
Angled Star Screen (vimeo.com/265482575/fa53eb75bc)
Steel Magnet (vimeo.com/265483053/5c0249b216)
Trommel (vimeo.com/265482728/1156d4cb50)
Bounce (vimeo.com/265482677/0a3b4b25f6)
Eddy Current (vimeo.com/265482621/2250d3b640)

Learning extension: Thinking back to the last lesson, where we looked at the properties of plastic, how could we use these to separate different types of plastic from each other? Share this clip with the class to see some easy ways to separate plastic by type.

Precious Plastic - The basics of plastic (part 2.1) (youtube.com/watch?v=fsqLJNyrVss)

Take Action: Let’s use physical properties to separate materials

Step 1

Explain to the class that their challenge now is to use what they’ve learned about the physical properties of materials and design a method for separating one specific recyclable material (such as paper) from other materials. Invite students to form groups of 3 - 4 and use the questions on the Student Worksheet to guide their design process. Students will need to choose a material, identify its physical properties, and note their ideas about how it could be separated from other materials.

Step 2

Guide students through the following instructions:

Using what you know about materials and their physical properties, design a machine that will separate one recyclable material from other materials.
Start by brainstorming ideas as a group, writing down all ideas in the space provided.
Work together to choose one idea (or merge two or more ideas together).
Sketch out a rough plan to make sure your design makes sense. Make any changes as required.
Add details about how your design uses the physical properties of the material to separate it from other materials.
Review your design to identify weak points and strengths.
Present your final design as an annotated diagram of how your design will work.

Step 3

Invite groups to share their designs with the rest of the class. They could use the following questions to guide them in preparing a quick presentation about their design:

What physical properties did you use to separate the recyclable material? Describe how your design worked.
What problems did you encounter in your design, and how did you overcome these problems?
What are the best parts of your design?
What would you like to improve in your design if you had additional time?

Learning Extension: Provide students with samples of mixed waste and time and resources to test their design ideas on a small scale.

Reflection

In this lesson, we have explored the physical properties of recyclable materials, and how we use those to recover material for reuse through recycling. Now that we have the physical material, what other resources do we need to be able to recycle plastic?

Visy Education - The Physical Properties of Recycling

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Summary

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