November 6, 2012. My third lesson for Social Studies and this dealt with our environment, natural resources and pollution. My lead teacher told me to do this lesson how ever I wanted. He said edit out from the lesson guide and add what you want and have fun with it. This is exactly what I did. After reading over the chapter and looking through the lesson guide I knew what I wanted to do. The lesson guide for this chapter was weak at best so I decided to add my own design and provide a little bit of a shock factor for my students.

I began the lesson with asking my students if they knew what environment meant and what natural resources are. Some had an idea, but for most of the class they were unsure. I gave examples such as the inside of our classroom is our environment; everything around us. Then I said if we were outside that would be our environment. Basically everything around us is our environment. I then asked for examples of natural resources and also gave examples. Examples include trees, stone, water, air, plants and animals etc. After my mini lesson I had the students work on a worksheet to where they had to look at a picture and decide if it came from a plant or an animal.

I then moved on to the meat of my lesson. POLLUTION. We read from the textbook and we talked a bit about the different types of pollution and the effects it has on the earth and people. I then used the "Elmo" to show my students a PowerPoint presentation I put together. With this presentation I focused on land, air and water pollution. I wanted to give a little shock factor to my students and I got what I wanted. A lot of ooohs, and ahhhs.

Land Pollution

Air Pollution

Water Pollution

After this presentation I transitioned to the back of the class and read Just a Dream to my students. This is a book about a boy who litters and does not take the time to recycle. The boy dreams of a future that does not look so good because of all the pollution. After he woke up he decided he did not like the look of the future so the boy decided to change his ways and start acting more responsible about recycling. After I finished reading the book I had the students write a couple sentences on what they could do now so their future does not look like the one from the book.

This was my favorite lesson because I wanted to add some shock factor and show my students the effects of pollution and how we as people can do little things here and there to help reduce it.