The Recycle for Cornwall campaign has been developed to raise public awareness of recycling and to provide consumers with a compelling reason to recycle.
Learning Objective: To investigate different types of materials in the waste stream, their properties and how these properties can be identified by different methods, e.g. sight, touch, simple experiment (magnetism). To find out what recycling is and why it is important. To explore what can be recycled.
Introduction: Children in groups of 4-6 to brainstorm all the properties of materials they know.
Main Activity: Children in same groups to sort the objects into different materials and fill in each item on the worksheet. Magnets can be used to find out which materials are magnetic. The results for each different material should be recorded on a tally chart. They should also try to identify all the different materials that can be recycled. The teacher could explain why it is important to recycle from a point of view of energy, resources, etc. informally during the activity. Children can put information into a bar chart or pie chart.
National Curriculum Links: Science Sc 3, 1A Maths data handling Ma2/1a, 4a & Ma3/4a, b
Learning Outcome: At the end of the sorting exercise children should be able feed back and explain sorting strategies. They can also present the data in graphs.
Extension: Design a machine to separate the aluminium from the steel.
