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SUBJECT AREAS:	Science, Language Arts

TEACHING OBJECTIVE:	To familiarize students with their community recycling program. To observe how aluminum cans are processed for recycling.

SKILLS:	Predicting, Observation, Inquiry, Analysis, Evaluation

MATERIALS:	chalkboard or flipchart for planning field trip notebooks and writing instruments (to prepare questions for field trip and to record answers on-site) permission slips (prepared, signed and collected ahead of time) transportation and chaperones

KEY VOCABULARY:	None

TEACHER TIP:	This lesson features a visit to a recycling center or transfer/sorting station. If these are not available in your community, consider adapting the lesson by visiting a landfill or by inviting the community recycling coordinator to talk to your class.

TIME:	Preparation Create and copy permission slips, 10-20 minutes Arrange transportation and chaperones, 5-30 minutes Class Time Planning activity, 30-45 minutes Field trip, 60-90 minutes plus travel time Wrap up, 30-45 minutes

BACKGROUND

Human societies have always had to deal with waste management. Technology has made it possible to recover many waste products before they become part of the waste stream.

Regardless of recycling efforts, aluminum cans make up less than one percent of the waste stream. Making new aluminum cans from recycled cans takes only five percent of the energy used to make a can from bauxite ore. The energy savings in 1996 alone were enough to light a city the size of Pittsburgh for six years.

Visiting a recycling center allows students to see in action what they've been talking about in theory with regard to waste recycling in general and aluminum can recycling in particular.

PROCEDURE

Field Trip Planning
1. Ask students to speculate about what happens to waste products at the recycling center. Does all the trash go in one place? What happens after it gets there? What kind of machinery do they think they'll see? What sources of energy are used to recycle the waste products? What do they think happens to cans at the recycling center?

2. Involve the students in planning a fact-finding trip to the recycling center. What do they want to find out? List their questions on the board or flipchart. (Save this list for the post-trip wrap up.)

3. Have students write in their notebooks the questions for which they especially want answers. Have them leave at least a half page between questions. Then have them guess what the answers might be. (They can jot down what they think in parentheses or label their guesses with a "P" for "prediction.") Optional: ask students to draw their idea of what the inside of a recycling center looks like and what machinery or sorting mechanisms they'll see.

4. Arrange a date and time to visit the recycling center. Distribute permission slips and arrange transportation.

Taking the Field Trip
5. Remind students to bring their notebooks and writing instruments. Ask students to consult their notebooks and review the questions they wanted to research. Suggest that they take a different color writing instrument with them on the field trip to write answers to their questions, so they can keep the answers separate from their predictions. Since they have been studying aluminum and aluminum cans, you may want to remind them to pay particular attention to how aluminum products are recycled.

Field Trip Discussion
6. When the students return, discuss what they learned (refer to the questions they listed earlier). Ask if and how what they saw surprised them. What did they learn about how waste materials were processed? How, in particular, were cans processed? How did the recycling center use what is known about aluminum's properties to separate the aluminum from other metal objects?

WRAP UP

(Students can choose one of the following activities.)
1. Create a poem that compares what "you used to think" about what happens at the recycling center to "what you know now." Start with these lines:

I used to think . . . .
But now I know . . . .
Repeat the lines in pairs to create poetic rhythm.

2. Write thank you letters to the recycling center tour guide. Each letter should mention one or two things the students learned.

3. Report on what people should know to recycle waste products appropriately. (For example, products must be sorted. Containers should be rinsed clean before dropping them in a recycling bin. Cans can be crushed to save storage space.) Decide if your class wants to set up a classroom recycling program, or present the information to another class to help them set one up in their own classroom. Decide how to communicate the information: pamphlets, posters, "Did you know?" announcements, storytelling, etc.

4. Find out rates, hours of operation, and procedures for cashing in cans at local recycling centers. Will recycling centers help groups recycle aluminum cans as a fundraising activity? Perhaps local businesses would also be willing to help.

EXTENSIONS

1. If your school has Internet access, search the Internet for more information about recycling in your community. For information related specifically to aluminum cans and the can making industry, you can go to these Internet addresses:

Aluminum Association
Can Manufacturers Institute

REFERENCE

Parts of this lesson were adapted from "Solving the Can Can Mystery," 4Rs Project: A Solid Waste Management Curriculum for Florida Schools, 1990, page 69.