Visible+or+Invisible+Memo

Thomas Sgueglia Air Pollution: Visible and Invisible

The Green Education Foundation’s motto is “creating a sustainable future through education.” Their module, “Air Pollution: Visible and Invisible,” is designed to get fourth grade students to understand what air pollution is. By furthering students’ education about sustainability and the environment, the Green Education Foundation hopes that positive changes will be seen worldwide. This curriculum is designed to teach students about key concepts of air pollution. It is divided into an experiment session and a brainstorming or teaching session. The students are asked to think about what air pollution is and write their ideas down. As a class, the students are to come up with a single definition of air pollution. The experiments are designed for students to think about different types of air pollution and their effects on society. The traditional petroleum jelly experiment allows students to visibly track particulates in the air around their school. The second experiment is the traditional watering the plant with tap water or vinegar. This experiment allows students to track the effects of pollution. The module is finished with a discussion on acid rain which can be related to the plant that was watered with vinegar. The “Air Pollution: Visible and Invisible” module was specifically designed to teach young students about air pollution. This is a more basic and underlying theme for most of the EcoEd Research Group’s literacy goals. The discussion on acid rain and visible particulate matter can be more focused on the understanding that what people do has effects nearby but it also branches out to other members of society as well. By teaching students that if a coal-fired power plant burns coal and produces pollution in one state, that the pollution will spread farther away and reach many states, the student will develop a learning outcome that is more closely related to the literacy goals of the EcoEd Research Group. This can be paired hand-in-hand with the literacy goal of being able to conceptualize complex causation without being paralyzed. The problem of air pollution has spiraled out of control especially in many urban areas of the world. Students must be able to understand these problems without fearing that they are too big or too far developed to fix. This would be a better lesson for older students as it is difficult to get younger students to realize this literacy goal by themselves.

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