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NO MORE PLASTIC (Phys. Ed.)

SUBJECTS Phys. Ed.
GRADE LEVEL Primary (K-3)
PLEDGE 1 - Protection of water

Resources Needed:

  1. No More Plastic by Alma Fullerton
  2. This lesson is best following No More Plastic (Introduction)
  3. Bean bags (4-5 per team)
  4. Enough hula hoops for each student plus one more for each group (approximately 25-30). If you don’t have enough hula hoops, pairs can share one hula hoop.

Introduction:

  1. After reading, No More Plastic by Alma Fullerton, speak as a class about why and how plastic objects end up in our water, why they are harmful, and what we can do to stop this.
  2. Tell students, We are going to play a game where we work together to clean up plastic in the ocean.

Lesson:

  1. Divide students into teams of 4-5. Have them stand in a straight line and hand out one hula hoop for each student plus one extra (i.e., a group of 4 students will have 5 hoops). Each student stands in their hula hoop with the extra hoop behind the last student in line. Designate a corner, or spot in the gym, for each team’s ‘home.’
  2. Spread the beanbags (which represent plastic objects in our waters) around the centre of the gym. Each student must remain in a hula hoop, and cannot get into the ‘water’ (any area outside the hoop). Students must work as a team (one behind the other), moving the extra hoop up the line, placing it on the ground in front of the first student in line. Each student moves up one hoop and the team continues to move the back hoop forward in this way until they reach the ‘plastic’ to be collected. Only one piece of ‘plastic’ may be picked up at a time. Teams then turn around and move in the same manner to return the ‘plastic’ to their home. Continue until the ocean is cleaned up.

Follow Up Activities:

  1. This could be done as a teamwork activity with all teams working together to clean up the ocean, or as a race to clean up the ocean as quickly as possible. 
  2. Variation: Two students, using three hoops, work as the ‘polluters’ moving around, in their own hoops, taking ‘cleaned up’ plastics and ‘littering’ them back into the ocean. This is an opportunity to talk about how difficult it is to clean the oceans when there is a steady stream of plastics entering the oceans.
  3. Variation: Assign each group a colour of bean bags that they must collect.