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Becoming a Sustainable Changemaker

Overview

The purpose of this lesson is to prompt students to take a step forward and become solutionaries by exploring and researching individuals who have created products intended to promote sustainability. Following their exploration and research, students will be invited to collaborate with their peers, select a topic of great interest, and develop a sustainable product. The students will be encouraged to share their creations with their class, school, and community. Ideally, the students realize their voices can be used as powerful agents of change.

Objectives

Students will be able to:
1. Analyze the ways in which innovators’ choices affect living beings and the environment.

2. Collaborate with their peers and conduct research with the goal of creating solutions to global issues.

3. Discuss the ways in which current products and systems are not sustainable.

4. Distinguish between sustainable and non sustainable products and systems.

Conceptual Understanding

Students will understand that:

  • Collaborating with others can promote change.

  • Actions have effects beyond immediate reactions.

  • Consumer choice and innovation can drive sustainable production and consumption patterns

Standards

Social Studies:

3.C&G.2: Understand how citizens participate in their communities

3.E.2: Understand entrepreneurship in a market economy

4.E.2: Understand the economic factors when making personal choices

4.G.1: Understand how human, environmental and technological factors affect the growth and development of North Carolina

5.E.2: Understand that personal choices result in benefits or consequences

5.G.1: Understand how human activity has and continues to shape the United States

Guiding Questions

  • What makes a product sustainable? (Conceptual)

  • Do you think everyone wants to make sustainable products? Why or Why not? (Provocative)

  • Why do people invent new products or new ways of doing things? (Conceptual)

  • What does sustainable mean? (Fact)

Assessment

Students will collaborate and develop a sustainable product based upon the research they collected. Students will then present their product to the class.  They will discuss the name of the product, the use for the product, the need the product satisfies, and how it will promote a more sustainable world.

Differentiation

  • For learners who may struggle with reading, video resources will be available as a part of the research project.

  • For kinesthetic learners children will create bubble maps.

  • Resources will be available that are appropriate for the multiple reading levels for each product.

  • Children will be grouped based on creating a balanced blend of strengths and weaknesses.

  • Children will have the ability to work independently and in groups to research their products and express their understanding.

Vocabulary

Sustainability - a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged

Innovation - a new idea, method, or device

Innovator - a person who creates a product or process in a new way

Community - A group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society

Market economy - an economic system in which prices are based on competition among private businesses and not controlled by a government

Consequences - a result or effect of an action or condition

Environment - the natural world, as a whole or in a particular geographical area, especially as affected by human activity

Solutions - a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation

Global - relating to the whole world, worldwide

Change - the act or instance of making or becoming different

Solutionary - One who finds revolutionary answers to life problems and helps promote change by finding a better way to do things.

Introduction

  1. The teacher will gather the students together. The teacher will then present them with an unfamiliar object (at this time, present the students with a sample or photograph of the Loliware cup). The teacher will ask the students:

    1. What is your first thought when you look at this product?

    2. What do you think this product is made of?

    3. Ultimately, what do you think this product is?

  2. The teacher will create a bubble map on the whiteboard with the picture of the product in the middle and the students can organize their thoughts and ideas around the picture.

  3. After the teacher and students discuss their initial thoughts, show the students a short video introducing them to the product (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLc1CvyrciM).

  4. After the video is shown, the teacher will hand out individual bubble map organizers to each student. Students will create their own bubble map with the product name in the middle and descriptive words around it after thinking about what they saw in the video.

Instruction & Guided Practice

  1. Follow with the statement and question: In our exploration about sustainability, the past few lessons have discussed how consumer choices and people have an impact on the environment and sustainability. Think about how one person can make a difference in the world. This product, Loliware, was designed by one person who saw a problem with a product and took action to make the product more sustainable.

  2. Discuss:

    1. What is sustainability? - When the environmental, economic and social needs of a society are met in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

    2. What other products can you think of that are sustainable?

    3. What products can you think of that are not sustainable? Why are they not sustainable?

    4. What makes a product sustainable?

    5. Why would people want to invent products that are sustainable?  What reason might dissuade people from making sustainable products?

    6. Why do people invent something new?

  3. The teacher and the students will make a list of sustainable and unsustainable products that the students are familiar with on the board. Once finished the teacher will tell the students that they are going to split into groups and analyze and research different sustainable products and the change makers who created them.

  4. The teacher will inform the students that once their research is completed, the class will come together as a group and present their findings. Further, the students will be divided into new groups and as a group they will become innovators of their own sustainable products.

  5. Explain to the students that they will utilize the Padlet platform to obtain the information they will need for each of their products. Divide students into predetermined groups at the following stations:

    1. Starbucks

    2. Edible Cutlery

    3. Recycled Shoes

    4. Loliware edible cups

    5. Biodegradable Bags

    6. Plant Based- biodegradable straws

  6. Students will work together to research the product at their station. Students will fill out the graphic organizer (somebody/wanted/but/so) about their particular product and complete the changemaker graphic organizer on the product’s creator.

  7. Once students have finished researching their product and filling out the graphic organizers, the teacher will call them back together.  Each group should present their product to the rest of the class.

  8. The class will discuss their thoughts on each product and how each product highlights sustainability.

  9. The teacher will tell the students that now that they have researched products, they have a better understanding of what makes a good sustainable product. Students are now invited to collaborate with a new group to create their very own unique sustainable product.

  10. The teacher will divide the students into new predetermined groups.

  11. Students will collaborate with their group members to create a new and unique sustainable product by completing their own changemaker worksheet. Students should come up with a creative name for their product, what it will be used for, how it is sustainable, what problem it solves, and who will use it.

  12. Once the groups have had sufficient time to create their new sustainable product, the class will come back together and students will present their new product to the class. They will explain what the product is, how it is sustainable, what problem it solves, how it is made, and who might use it.

Closure & Summary

Play the below youtube video that discusses children becoming solutionaries. Remind children that everyone has a voice and that all it takes is one person with an idea and some determination to make a difference.  Students will write on a piece of paper “I pledge to make more environmentally friendly choices that are good for people, the planet, and the economy by….” and fill in their answer. The pledges will be collected and placed in a three ring binder notebook in the classroom as a reminder to students about how important it is to make informed consumer choices.

 

https://youtu.be/GBZ2SZ-It1c

Resources & Materials

  • Starbucks

  • Edible Cutlery

  • Recycled Shoes

  • Plant Based- biodegradable straws

  • Loliware edible cups

  • Computers or ipads

  • Somebody/What/But/So organizer

  • Bubble maps

  • Changemakers’ graphic organizer

  • Whiteboard and markers

  • Padlet platform with sustainable product information on it

  • Three-ring binder with plastic inserts for student pledges

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