Eight Simple Ways to Reduce Plastic in the Classroom

OK. We all know about the plastic bag dilemma. Additionally,  most of us are trying to use at least a few cleaning and personal care products that are less toxic. The recycling gig is also familiar to many. But when I recently read about the Pacific garbage patch (North Pacific gyre) on Beth Terry’s web site, Fake Plastic Fish, I found myself completely overwhelmed.

This thing is enormous, people. I’ve seen a fair bit in my lifetime. And I can honestly say it takes quite a bit to shock me, let alone bring me to my knees. When I started researching this phenomenon and saw just how enormous it was, I had to sit down and physically get control of my emotions. I felt physically ill. How can one person feel like what they do makes a difference? And yet, how can anyone sit and do nothing? Beth has done such an amazing job of providing inspiration and information to us. While I’m not sure I can get to her level overnight, she has made me think about what more I can do with my purchasing decisions. Schools generate an enormous amount of trash. When it comes to your classroom, how much of your room’s waste is plastic? Here are a few simple strategies to get you started. I’ll post more information and product reviews as I come across the resources. In the meantime, here we go:

1.Use a refillable tape dispenser.

This alone eliminates the casings the regular rolls come in. Yes, you still have the tape itself, but it’s a start that makes a significant waste reduction.

2.Create your classroom supplies list carefully.

Whether you hand your list out at the end of the year, or have it available for pickup in August, your list has the power to make a huge impact. Consider recommending refillable pens for intermediate grades, stainless steel pencil sharpeners and refillable stainless steel water bottles.

3.Buy your supplies in bulk, particularly things like liquid and powdered tempera, hand sanitizer, lotion, etc.

It’s difficult to find plastic free packaging on some of these things, but by purchasing in bulk you’ll have fewer containers to dispose of.

4.Be more conscious of the teacher supplies you purchase and use.

Your students look to you as a a strong example. Consider a non plastic lunch tote, or wire bins for supply storage.

5.Chalk.

Rather than go for the plastic packaged markers and white board for every single lesson, get back to basics with a blackboard and chalk. Bonus? It’s cheap.

6.Rubber stamps.

I think stickers are fun too, but some of them are enormous and not exactly made of paper. A fun stamp with colorful ink will still reinforce quality work in a way the kiddos can get excited about. They also make stamps to fit in the small squares on reinforcement charts.

7.Composition books.

When asking students to bring in several journals for various subjects, request that they skip the ones with plastic covers and go with the old fashioned paperboard bound composition books.

8.An eco bag fund raiser.

This’ll get the ball rolling, and now is a great time to do it . . . BEFORE everyone buys their kids plastic versions. The folks over at EcoBags.Com gave me the link to their Earth friendly fund raising program. I’ll be reviewing the product individually in the next few weeks right here on Lesson Mag. (So stay tuned.)

Got another classroom plastic reduction tip? Share your information in the comment section below. This post was written in support of the Green Moms carnival, which will be hosted on April 14th, 2009 over at Fake Plastic Fish. For other going green in the classroom information, check out our cloth bulletin board post, eco trash bag article and this post on affordable classroom transition strategies.

Photo Credit: Tourist on Earth

Bulletin Boards: Twelve Ideas for Older Classrooms

 

Educators of older students ask me all the time for ideas that are low on “cutesy” and high on sophistication. This request holds true for bulletin boards and classroom décor as much as curriculum and lesson structure. Want some ideas on how to pull this off? Read on.

Let’s face it. All students eventually get to the point where they are basically “over” teddy bears and apples. So what do you do from fourth-twelfth grades when it comes to producing quality bulletin boards for the classroom? Here are some tricks to get the job done.

Cover Images from Books and News Magazines.

Color xeroxed ( and possibly enlarged, depending on the original size) copies of book covers and news magazines are great for literature studies, theme units or current event projects. Even book covers for younger readers will provide a more grown up feel than snowman cutouts. So if it’s mid year and your third graders are starting to request more sophisticated bulletin boards in the classroom, this idea is a great way to start.

An Editorial Collection.

If you have a hot topic in the news that’s discussed quite a bit in your classroom, post a newspaper article from the local paper on the board and surround it with brief op-ed pieces from your students written on large index cards. This is a fantastic opportunity to introduce that type of work, as well as work in a critical thinking assignment.

Distribution Center.

Overwhelmed by all those notices, book club handouts and forms from the office? Consider making at least one of your bulletin boards an information distribution center. Choose a title such as “Command Center” or “Central Command” if you are teaching at a DODDS school. Include a sedate classroom calendar in the center and perhaps a news clipping or two regarding the school. Then attach some acrylic document holders for handouts, returned documents with signatures, a homework slot, attendance and lunch count. This takes at least one bulletin board slot from a full time chore and puts it firmly in the category of  management tool, leaving you with a  smoother running classroom. You can even use some of the space for reinforcement charts and other low cost student reward programs.

Photos.

Instead of animated cartoon-style drawings, consider photographs or color prints as your graphic illustrative element. Some examples could include travel and nature images for geography and science studies, volcano shots, Hubble images, mountain range photos, tribal action shots from remote villages, etc. Another great way to go is with action shots of your students themselves involved with various stages of the writing process, math games, lab experiments, etc. Post cards also rock as a way to get professional quality bulletin board images on the cheap. Tried all of that and still can’t find what you need? Check out online image databases of postage stamps from around the world. If you have a color printer, these can make great download solutions. Remember, national governments pay artists big bucks to come up with fantastic stamps. This is professional quality work you are able to snag for less than a song.

Post Its.

These things come in about as many size and color options as index cards, and are great for adding bold color and graphic elements if you don’t have access to a large supply of construction paper. My favorite use for them is as a replacement for the primary grade level calendar pieces. Instead of cutesy tree ornament pieces in December, go with green and red squares from peel off desk pads. Not only will this look more appropriate for the older grades, it’ll also make for a cheaper classroom calendar.  Just make sure you match the Post It size to the calendar squares.

Lose the Baby Borders.

Snowmen and school buses just don’t cut it after third grade. Consider cloth borders such as belt webbing or woven tribal trims used for funky DIY sewing projects. Nautical themed rope, wide ribbon and solid colored trims are also more than usable as ideas for your bulletin boards. Also, call me crazy but I think straighter edges look a bit more grown up as well. They also reduce the visual chaos present on so many bulletin boards. This is important for older grades where the bulletin board information can be more diverse, or relating to a more complex scientific or math concept.  It’s also helpful for any grade level where you may be trying to provide successful inclusion time for students who may be sensitive to overwhelming amounts of visual stimulation. A good source for materials like sentence and cursive strip borders would be Dollar Tree.

On the other hand, if you really want something unexpected or three dimensional, consider play money from a board game, playing cards, colored pencils or some sort of chopstick / tongue depressor border for a natural look. Just attach the items in an overlapping or side by side pattern, depending on the look you are going for. If you attach the items to the outside frame of the board and make sure they overlap to the inside a bit, you could technically skip needing a formal paper border for the rest of the year. Score!

Shadowing.

This looks great for lettering as well as for white paper printouts of textual information that might otherwise look dull. When doing it with letters, you simply cut out a second set of letters to attach to the back of the brighter ones, taking care to position them slightly up and to the left. This allows for them to still appear as one letter, and yet be highlighted visually. My favorite three looks are black shadows with newsprint lettering, black shadow letters with any other bright color and holographic letters with black shadows. The newsprint combo is great for current events or information distribution bulletin boards, and the holographic shadow letters look smashing for themes like meteorology or mathematics. Black background with front color combo lettering works for nearly anything else you want to look more grown up and serious such as author studies or geography.

Using the shadowing technique for printed text is equally simple. Whether it’s a paragraph with dated historical data, a game schedule for the school basketball team, or contest entry details for a grade level poster competition, all you need to do is cut a colored piece of background paper and attach it to the clipping or printout the same way you would with lettering. Up, and to the left.

News Headlines.

Whether for current events, school coverage in the local paper or recreated news headlines from a particular date or period in history, including visual headlines (shadowed or otherwise) just makes for a more sophisticated look overall. You could also modify this idea for informational resource bulletin boards as well. Just be sure to make the topic or category titles are “newsy” enough to catch the attention of students, teachers, parents or whoever else you are creating the bulletin board for.

Inserts, Foldouts and Maps.

Many traditional periodicals have freebies that come along with the monthly copies. Nat Geo is known for their killer maps, and various news magazines have charts and fold out center articles that make fantastic fodder for bulletin board themes. Bonus? Professionally published materials always look more grown up than basic kiddy charts.

Darker Background Colors.

Whether you go the fabric route or use traditional butcher paper, darker colors ground the room, have a more serious feel and provide a fantastic backdrop for colored elements like post cards, geographical imagery and travel photos. Also, if you are planning on using busier looking elements like detailed maps and charts as primary objects in your bulletin board design, you’ll need all of the visual grounding support you can get.

One year in Kuwait I arrived to find that all of the colored butcher paper had been used. Black was the only color that remained until the overseas supply delivery arrived a few months down the road. Those of you who follow my Wise Bread blog know how highly I value black elements as a stylish and affordable decorating strategy.  Since I had fifth grade that year, I decided to experiment.

The result? I ended up with some of my most smashing bulletin boards ever and the students loved them. In fact, several of them commented the very first day to children in other rooms that they were in the “cool” room with the “grown up” decorations. Yup. Black’s a hit. It’s also extremely neutral, providing a transitional background to use on bulletin boards all year long.

Graphic Organizers.

Charts, graphs, diagrams and tables are all professional ways to integrate curriculum into the bulletin board space in a way that will appeal to older students. Even yarn or twine pieces stretched from labeled push pins to tinier chart details still looks streamlined and serious while providing extra organizational support for readers. Think period tables, KWL charts, etc.

Topic Choice.

This is particularly helpful if you are teaching in a resource room where the material is geared for younger or lower ability levels. Consider a biographical study board of an important historical figure such as Columbus where the information is written for the ability level but presented in one of the ways suggested in this article. Leave the four-six line elementary songs and chants for the primary grades. Another example would be a basic scientific method board versus one on teddy bear math.

These are my top twelve solutions for better bulletin boards. Some other helpful resources from around the web? This link has one of the better breakdowns I’ve seen on elementary versus high school design choices. You can also look here for some fantastic illustrated examples of bulletin boards for higher level math concepts, or here to read about an idea for using DVD cover images to jazz up a Shakespearean literature study. Last but not least, this resource page has an excellent write up on student-created middle school literature study bulletins. Got another great tip for educators in the upper grades? Share the love in the comment section below. 

Photo Credits: Dull Hunk, Digital Art 2, Becflies 2001, Image Editor.

This article was included in Carnival of Education #225.

Eco Trash Bags for Classroom and School

Trying to fight the plastic bag dilemma? Still need to get your classroom trash to the curb? I recently came across a product that is as helpful for schools as it is for office and home. Read on.

The Perf Go Green company has tackled the issue of biodegradable trash bags in a way that won’t produce harmful gases during the breakdown. Made of recycled plastic, these bags are super sturdy and contain an additive that allows the products to break down into non toxic biomass within two years. No toxic fumes or byproducts are left behind. How cool is that?

The bags are bright green and are available in standard 13 gallon kitchen,  larger 30 gallon yard size (which is what we actually prefer for our kitchen trash), commercial trash bags for whole school use, and paint drop cloths for larger student projects. I’ve reviewed the product in depth over on my Wise Bread blog, but wanted to bring them to your attention here in the education arena.  They are available at various retail stores and at Amazon.

Because these bags are so affordable, they should be an easy sell to your school board, administration, PTO or steering committee. This product seems to be custom made for making a distance on a grand scale via use in institutions and municipalities. They also have food storage and cash register bags scheduled to come out some time in 2009.  If you’ve been looking for an alternative to toxic trash bags in the classroom, Perf Go Green may be just what you’re looking for.

Photo Credit: Amazon.Com