AITC Classnotes, Spring 2000

Montgomery, Alabama	Spring 2000
*CLASSNOTES*

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Taking trash to school • Can everything be turned into compost? • How does compost help growing plants? • Remember: reduce, reuse, recycle • More ideas for classroom activities •Mini-grant winners •
Taking trash to school
Whatever we decide to label it—rubbish, trash, waste, refuse, or garbage—the piles keep growing. It comes from homes, schools, businesses, factories, and other places. It is generated by people of all ages. In the United States each person produces 3 to 5 pound of waste each day! As hard as we try to reduce and recycle large amounts of waste, we will still have some left to be disposed of. More than half of the waste we produce is organic material that could be composted. Composting is a natural process that happens with or without our help. By composting we turn waste into a useful product that can improve soil. One way to manage trash is to compost. Click on the leaves to find activities and answers to these questions:	Americans produce about 4 pound of trash eash day. *One way to manage waste is to compost.*
Can everything be turned into compost?
How does compost help growing plants?
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Remember: reduce, reuse, recycle Start your search for resources on a local level: Your county extension agent is a good person to contact for more information about a variety of agricultural topics, including composting.
Visit these websites about composting: Here are the URLs for three web sites that contain games and other information for children about composting.
http://www.epa.gov/recyclecity Recycle City is an interactive site with games and activites, designed to be viewed in a graphical browser. On its home page, children are welcomed to Recycle City where they will "see how the people of Dumptown turned their backward town around, find out how Recycle City reduces waste and saves money, learn more about recycling than you ever dared, and get a clue where all that garbage goes."
http://www.recycleroom.org Roscoe's Recycle Room has fun games, recycling facts, and educational activies. Roscoe is the official "spokescan" for the Steel Recycling Institute.
http://www.kidsgardening.com This site covers all aspects of gardening with children, including information about youth garden grants. The "digging deeper" section lets you search for keywords in categories like "classroom stories," "teaching strategies," and "activities." A keyword search for "composting" found four classroom stories and two activities about composting.
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More ideas for classroom activities
Building a compost bin	Reduce, reuse, recycle	More activities about composting
Mini-grant winners Congratulations to the winners of the Alabama Agriculture in the Classroom Mini-Grant Program for the second period of the 1999-2000 school year. Listed below are the winners and their classroom projects. Listen – Follow Along – and Learn Susan Haney, Karen Mann Northside Hal Henderson School, Talladega Improving reading skills and learning about farms animals–these are two of the benefits elementary students will receive from this mini-grant. The grant monies will be used to purchase "Hide and Seek on the Farm," a read-along box of 18 student books and a cassette tape with turn-the-page signals. Beginning and at-risk readers will be able to listen to a farm story on tape and read along with the narrator. The set can also be used in small groups or with the whole class. C-Fern Fertilization and Genetics of Plants Suzie Thomas and Lorie Burnett Talladega High School, Talladega Two mini-grants were awarded to help high school students better prepare for taking the AP biology exam. This exam will enable them to receive college credit for a biology class. The grants will be used to purchase two kits: a C-Fern Sperm Chemotaxis Kit and a Genetics of Plants Kit. The C-Fern Sperm Chemotaxis Kit will allow students to test the ability of sperm to detect and swim to a chemical signal and to document the responses to a series of test solutions. This will help students understand not only fertilization in the fern, but also fertilization of the human egg. The Genetics of Plants Kit will allow the students to explore Mendelian genetics through growing and pollinating hybrid plants. This will help the students to better understand the concepts of segregation, independent assortment, inheritance of unit characters, and dominance.
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