Earth Day is here!

In celebration, Georgia-Pacific was excited to collaborate with educators in the USA, in their first lesson plan contest! It was an opportunity to share Earth Day with students and showcase great lesson plans.

This project to highlight conservation in the classroom started with a fun opportunity to chat with representatives from Georgia-Pacific on New Teacher Chat. It was clear on the chat that teachers really care about sharing this message with their students. We had an amazing discussion about #EarthDay and Conservation and asked six questions for our discussion.

You can read the entire archive here.

Here are some of the key thoughts that educators shared that evening:

• Earth Day should be emphasized year round, not just one day a year.
• More effort should be placed on school culture to stress recycling.
• Schools should make an effort to focus on conservation in the curriculum
• We need to teach our students the 4 R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover.

As the project continued a Pinterest Board was designed to showcase the lesson plans. You can see all the entries here.

 

It’s clear from the submissions that educators are eager to share the message of conservation with
their students.

Some of the highlights of the lessons include:

• Supporting students to understand their impact on the environment.
• Showing students how to reduce the amount of trash in their lives.
• Ways students can encourage local business owners to recycle.
• Teaching what it means to conserve and use technology to gather information.
• Focusing on renewable vs. non-renewable energy.

We have had some wonderful lessons submitted for this contest and our Education Panel now has the difficult job of selecting the winners! This panel is composed of three outstanding educator experts including Erin Klein, Paula Naugle and Jaime Vandergrift.

These Education Experts will now evaluate all eligible entries based on a 4 point rubric looking for Goals for the Lesson, Content for the Lesson and Creativity of the Lesson.

As the judging phase comes to a close…there will be three (3) prize winners!

o One (1) grand prize winner will receive: a tablet, a $500 Staples gift card, and Georgia-Pacific
products.
o Two (2) runner-up winners will each receive a $250 Staples gift card and Georgia-Pacific
products.

Lastly, I will notify all winners via email the week of April 29 and Georgia-Pacific will announce all the winners on its newsroom.

We want to thank all the educators who submitted lessons for their participation in the contest! We also thank Georgia-Pacific for its support of educators who are working to make a difference in kids’ lives, every day. I look forward to announcing the winners!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to TeachingWithSoul and connect with me on Twitter.

Disclosure: I am receiving compensation as a consultant from Georgia-Pacific for this post and contest.

Georgia-Pacific has developed Educational in Nature® – an environmental education program developed more than ten years ago. The program provides activities and lesson plans for 4^{th &} 5^thgrade students and teachers. Resources are free here.

Photo credit:  via Haiku Deck

Photo credit: via Twitter