Lesson 1 - All Wrapped Up
Students explore packaging by classifying it and by examining its properties. They discuss how manufacturers make choices about packaging for particular products and discuss packaging properties such as strength, weight and stackability from the consumer perspective. The lesson lays the groundwork for the concept of aluminum as a product package that, because of its recyclability, conserves resources.

Lesson 2 - What a Can Can Do
Students investigate the properties of metal cans by conducting experiments with aluminum, steel and bimetal cans. They examine weight, magnetism, temperature conductivity and appearance as characteristics that help differentiate one type of can from another. The lesson begins a focus on the aluminum can as a package whose properties make it useful for common products in today's society.

Lesson 3 - Going in Cycles: The Life of an Aluminum Can
Students study cycles and relate what they know to the can manufacturing process. They learn that aluminum is a metal found with other products in nature, and make a clay can to conceptualize how cans are made. This lesson introduces the concept of "closed-loop recycling."

Lesson 4 - Honey, I Shrunk the Lids!
Students examine different-sized can lids and learn that the can making industry uses technology to create smaller lids that use less aluminum, thereby conserving resources and reducing the need to mine for bauxite. They identify which kind of end their can has. They seek out other facts about aluminum and aluminum can recycling by using fact sheets and reporting their information to the class. This lesson introduces the concept of lightweighting.

Lesson 5 - Make a Difference
Students recognize the impact of recycling on energy and natural resources by working math problems that show "equivalencies" between recycling an aluminum can and the corresponding energy savings in gasoline or electricity. They then apply this concept to their own family's recycling practices. This lesson reinforces the concept that one person's efforts to recycle can make a difference. It is a prelude to lessons 6 and 7, which encourage students to implement an environmental action project.

Lesson 6 - Information, Please!
Students plan a field trip to a recycling center, where they observe "for real" what they've been discussing "in theory." This lesson reinforces properties of matter (students are asked to recall how matter's properties can help identify and be used to separate objects, as in Lesson 2) and asks students to develop questions they want to explore during their field trip. They speculate on the answers and then, when they return from the field trip, compare their predictions to observed facts.

Lesson 7 - Action, Please!
Students plan an action project related to their case study of aluminum and aluminum can recycling. The lesson suggests procedures for conducting the following optional activities: participating in The Great Aluminum Can RoundUp, making signs/posters, creating public service announcements and creating a newsletter or newspaper.