Paper Patrol

Micki Hammond
mhammond@cyberport.net

GOALS
The goals of this unit are:
Problem Solving:
-Pursuing open-ended problems and extended problem-solving projects
-Investigating and formulating questions from problem situations

Reasoning:
-Reasoning from graphs
-Reasoning inductively and deductively

Connections:
-Combining science and math with other subjects
-Connecting to the world outside

Statistics:
-Using statistical methods to describe, analyze, evaluate, and make decisions

Grade level: 3-6

Time required: One week

Background:
In America, each person uses up to 600 pounds of paper per year. Cereal boxes, toilet paper, individually wrapped foods all constitute enough paper each year to build a wall from Los Angeles to New York 12-feet high. Newspapers and telephone books are the most common items in the more than 6,000 landfills in the U.S. Paper constitutes a large portion of the solid waste generated in the school environment. Solid waste management has been a major concern for some years. Awareness is the first step to solutions. An awareness of the amount of paper used in an average classroom for a week can lead to an awareness of the magnitude of the problem and lead to discussions for solutions.

In this activity, students will collect all the paper generated in their classroom for a week. This includes the paper used for hand-outs, assignments, and art paper left over from art projects. This activity can be used as an introduction to a unit on recycling. Cross-curricular extensions are included at the end of the activity. One of the extensions is to calculate how much paper would be generated by all U.S. students or at the state, city, county, or district level.

Procedure
1. Discuss the resources needed for paper production and the statistics found in the description.
2. Determine the types of paper used in the classroom, i.e. ditto, construction, notebook paper.
3. Set up an area to retrieve paper throughout the week.
4. At the end of the week, weigh the paper collected.
5. Use this information to estimate paper usage per student, classroom,and school.

This can be extended to estimate the usage for entire districts, counties and states. The student populations can be obtained from district or county offices. Contact your state education office for further information on student population in individual states.

Extensions:

Language Arts
1. Students develop a class plan to reduce paper waste. This plan is displayed as a poster or as a letter home to parents.
2. Students use the results of the project to create a commercial on paper recycling.

Science
1. Students research paper making and alternatives.
2. Students take a field trip to a landfill.

Art
1. Create recycled paper from the collected paper. This paper can then be used for several other projects such as cards, poems and collages.