Education Standards
Decomposer Cards
Decomposer Cards_Spanish
Digging Into Nutrients 1
Digging Into Nutrients 2
Digging Into Nutrients 3
Exploring the Reading
FBI Most Wanted Poster Template
FBI - SPECIAL AGENT ID
Food- Then and Now
Landfill Cross-Section
Mummy Mystery
Museum Art – Preserving Against Time
Race To Decomposition Energy Flow Chart
Race to Decomposition Materials List
Teacher Journey Model of Professional Development
Video Accompaniment Decomposers
Video Accompaniment Decomposers_SPANISH
Whale Fall Field Guide
Woolly Mammoth Sparks Debate
ZG Multimodal Model Scaffold
Zombie Guacamole 3D Assessment
Zombie Guacamole - Guidance for Educators
Zombie Guac Model
Zombie Guacamole (5th)
Overview
Zombie Guacamole is an upper elementary curricular program created by EarthGen. For this unit, we offer professional development training and assistance with implementation. If you are interested in implementing this program at your school or district, please let us know! Please contact info@earthgenwa.org for more information.
In Zombie Guacamole, students build an evidence-based explanation of why a bowl of guacamole was found at the bottom of a 25-year-old landfill, still fresh! The focus of this program is decomposition: what is required for it to occur, its importance to ecosystems, and how waste systems are linked to the health of people and the environment. Students develop explanatory models to describe the movement of matter in an ecosystem and work in groups to manipulate
conditions for decomposition in an investigation. Beyond that, students also build knowledge of natural and human-made systems of food production and waste management to inform action in their school community to protect Earth’s resources and environment. Through Zombie Guacamole, students can combine scientific understanding, environmental consciousness, and action to become leaders for a more just and sustainable future.
Introduction
Introduction to Zombie Guacamole
Welcome to Zombie Guacamole! In this unit, students are invited to build an evidence-based explanation of why a bowl of guacamole was found at the bottom of a 25-year-old landfill, still fresh! The focus of this unit is decomposition: what is required for it to occur, its importance to ecosystems, and how waste systems are linked to the health of people and the environment.
In this unit, students will work collaboratively to uncover new knowledge and perspectives. Students develop explanatory models to describe the movement of matter, energy, and waste, and the interconnectedness of elements in an ecosystem. They’ll deepen their understanding by manipulating conditions for decomposition in a jar. Students will also build knowledge of natural and human-made systems for the cycling of matter to inform action in their school community to protect the Earth’s resources and health. Through Zombie Guacamole, students can combine family and cultural knowledge, scientific understanding, ecological consciousness, and social action to become leaders for just and sustainable futures in their communities.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed through Zombie Guacamole
| Standard | Description |
|---|---|
5-LS2-1 | Develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. |
5-ESS3-1 | Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment. |
5-PS3-1 | Use models to describe that energy in animals’ food (used for body repair, growth, and motion and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun. |
Commitment to Environmental Justice
The next generation will inherit two interconnected crises they did not create: climate change and environmental injustice. To respond to these realities through intentionally designed learning experiences, we committed to the use of a variety of pedagogical approaches that are woven into this program.
A prominent pedagogical approach is Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies, which build from the foundation laid by culturally responsive and culturally relevant practices. Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies allow, invite, and encourage students to not only use their cultural and community knowledges and practices in school, but to actively maintain and deepen them. Through the guidance and professional support provided in this program, teachers will have tools to weave these commitments into their teaching practices in ways that are responsive to their community contexts and collectively move toward environmental justice with students, families, and communities.
By creating learning experiences that center the specific place-based interests, histories, knowledge, practices, and priorities of students, families, and communities – especially those of the global majority – we’ll see students, families, and communities feel welcomed, respected, and intellectually cared for in science learning spaces within and beyond the classroom.
In each lesson, we outline key information, perspectives, and practices related to culturally sustaining pedagogies and environmental justice that you can incorporate into your practice. We encourage liberatory teaching and learning while practicing anti-racist principles, because it is relevant to the lives of all students and the environmentally just futures they deserve.
A framework guiding the enactment of these commitments is the Science Social Focus Framework, designed by Anastasia Sanchez and applied to an early analysis of our programs. This framework consists of key interconnected concepts such as:
Critical Consciousness - Promoting an awareness of others and society to apply appropriate empathy or critique through the lens of environmental justice. In Zombie Guacamole, we invite students to be curious about the perspectives of more-than-humans (e.g. plants, water, animals, soil) and consider the relationality and interconnectedness of many elements in an ecosystem.
Consequential Concern - Grappling with matters of future wellbeing and ecological caring as students make connections between science content and the consequential concerns facing society. For example, in this unit we investigate questions like “Where does our garbage go when we throw it away?” and explore how our “away” is someone’s “here” or “home.”
Critical & Liberatory Presence - Restorative justice-oriented representation that names the intersectional injustices faced by racially and socioeconomically marginalized communities — as well as their resistance, leadership, and flourishing. We want students to be comfortable bringing their full selves into this program experience so that their motivations and solutions are authentic and applicable to their lives. We also emphasize the contributions and innovations of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities to scientific inquiry and environmental justice.
Unit and Lesson Structure
This unit is designed to be flexible and adaptable to your needs and the needs, interests, age, and experience level of the students you are working with! Based on students’ language experiences, you can ask them to gather their ideas through written text, demonstrations, and/or drawings in the included science journals. Most importantly, we hope you engage your students in authentic conversation about our focal topic and center collective inquiry on the many ideas and questions students themselves generate.
Throughout this unit, we encourage the use of multimodal representation of students' prior knowledge and new learning through actions like, but not limited to: writing, diagramming, verbal dialogue, performance, creative art, embodied movement and gesture, multiple languages, and more. This is a more expansive understanding of traditional scientific definitions of explanatory modeling. Multimodal representation of knowledge and learning is also an avenue where culturally sustaining pedagogies can flourish through foregrounding students’ cultural knowledge and practices. To learn more about this, check out ACESSE Resource G, which we highlighted during the teacher training.
Each lesson in this unit has a suggested framework:
- Lesson Overview - We introduce a story element, conversation prompt, or a guiding question that focuses the planned learning for the day. As you progress through the unit, we encourage the incorporation of students’ questions from previous lessons that align with the upcoming content and activities.
- Main Activities and Materials - The sequence of the activities, related materials, and supplemental information to guide you and your students through the new content.
- Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections - Our opportunity to highlight how the lesson has been tailored to enable practices and conversations that are culturally sustaining and/or uplift the histories, perspectives, challenges, and innovations of frontline and BIPOC communities. This section may also include notes and commentary to help you navigate challenging conversations that occur when learning about environmental injustices and how they may impact your students.
- Concluding Reflection - a reflection question for students to engage with through sketching, journaling, or other creative forms of expression. This is an ideal point in each lesson for students to practice multimodal representation of their learning, even if of a simple concept or design. The students can refer to these models to construct more complex representations later. When time allows, any of these concluding reflection prompts can also be used to facilitate small-group or whole-class discussions.
Finally, we also encourage the use of a cognitive routine at the start and/or conclusion of each lesson’s learning activities. Ambitious Science Teaching has a number of tools relevant for every science classroom. One option is the KLEWS chart, which is a modification of the well-known comprehension strategy known as KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learned). KLEWS stands for:
- K - What do we think we know?
- L - What are we learning?
- E - What is our evidence?
- W - What do we still wonder about?
- S - What scientific principles/vocabulary help explain the phenomena?
Where and how the KLEWS chart exists is up to you. Consider making a semi-permanent space on a bulletin board or whiteboard, or asking students to create one in their science journals. Using the classroom KLEWS chart, you can support shared learning by writing guiding questions and collecting student responses for all members of the class to see.
Resources for Teacher Learning
To provide context for the learning activities in this unit, we strongly encourage you to explore these resources prior to beginning your implementation. Many of these resources are also woven into the guidance for specific lessons below.
- Introduction to a Modern Landfill (explanatory text and video)
- Dr. Rathje, Garbologist - Talkin Trash (video, 4:37)
- Intersectional History of Environmentalism (video, 15:16)
- NRDC, The Environmental Justice Movement (article)
- Environmental Justice, Explained (video, 3:33)
- A Brief History of Environmental Justice (video, 3:35)
- Learning in Places, Complex Socio-Ecological Systems and Relationships in Socio-Ecological Systems (education frameworks)
- Two-Eyed Seeing: Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (video, 5:52)
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry (essay)
- Out of Sight, Out of Mind (podcast, 21:12)
- How the Hell Did it Get HERE? (podcast, 18:28)
- Discarded: Communities on the Frontlines of the Global Plastic Crisis (report)
- Cecilia Huang, What is Waste Colonization? (article)
- Martin Medina, The Aztecs of Mexico: A Zero Waste Society (article)
- Arty Mangan, Decolonizing Regenerative Agriculture: An Indigenous Perspective (article)
- Hannah Arledge, Discover the Roots of Regenerative Agriculture in Indigenous Cultures (article)
- NRDC, Industrial Agriculture 101 (article)
- Yesenia Cuello, History of Agricultural Labor in the US (article)
Children in the Fields: The Stories You Should Know (report)
Except where otherwise noted, this work by EarthGen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. All logos and trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Lesson 1
Lesson 1: The Story of Zombie Guacamole
Lesson Overview
In this first lesson, you’ll be introduced to the mysterious story of the Zombie Guacamole, a bowl of guacamole that did not break down in the landfill even after 25 years!
The first day of the unit is an opportunity to set the stage for several fun and engaging weeks of learning. In presenting the story of the Zombie Guacamole, we encourage you to speak with enthusiasm and excitement to build students’ interest in the mystery. You might even bring in some guacamole to enjoy while kicking off the unit!
This is also a great time to introduce the protocols for how you will learn together throughout the unit. Students should understand that they will keep track of their ideas, wonderings, and reflections in a science journal. They should also be aware of the general structure for each day and the multimodal representations that we introduced during our training and the introduction to this unit.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-ESS3-1
Main Activities and Materials
Introducing the Story of Zombie Guacamole (10 minutes)
Let your students know that you are about to read the story of Zombie Guacamole! While you read the story, ask students to use sticky notes or their journal to jot down at least one example each of something they notice, something they wonder about, and something they know that might connect to the story. Let students know they should be ready to share their thoughts with a partner.
“Many years ago, there was an archeologist named Dr. Rathje. Unlike other archeologists who normally dig up dinosaur bones or old burial ruins, Dr. Rathje would dig through landfills and look at all the stuff people threw away. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it!
One day while digging at the bottom of an old landfill, he unearthed a white ceramic bowl and sensed he was on the verge of a major discovery. He tossed aside a newspaper dated from 25 years ago, scraped a grayish layer of dirt off the bowl and held his breath. He saw something unbelievable inside. Could it be?! He cautiously swirled his finger around it. Finally, he scooped out a dollop of something that was lumpy and bright green and had a faintly yellow tinge. ‘Hey!’ Dr. Rathje shouted to his excavation crew, ‘I think it's guacamole!’
It was guacamole. Guacamole that had been buried in an Arizona landfill for 25 years. Guacamole so well-preserved there were still chunks of avocado in the bowl. Back from the dead!
What a mystery! What do you notice about the Zombie Guacamole? What questions do you have about this mystery? What do you already know that connects with this story?”
After you finish reading the story, give students a few more minutes to write and/or draw on their three sticky notes or their science journals. Then, ask them to find a partner and take turns sharing their noticings, wonderings, and connections to their prior knowledge. If you use sticky notes, you may want to gather them to refer back to throughout the unit.
Landfill Cross-Section (10 minutes)
Prior to this activity, review the Introduction to a Modern Landfill video to equip yourself with basic knowledge on the structure of a landfill. You may also choose to share the video with students, time permitting.
During the lesson, summarize the key features and structure of a landfill with your students using the Landfill Cross-Section activity sheet. To assist students in understanding where the guacamole was found, project the activity sheet on a screen for an interactive class discussion. You may also choose to print individual handouts for your students to reference. As you show and tell your students about the structure of the landfill:
- Use arrows, pictures, lines, words, etc. to express aspects of the story and what was shared in the modern landfill video.
- Include both observable factors ("Where was the guacamole in the landfill?") and non-observable factors ("Inside the landfill, do you think it’s warm? Cold? Dry? Wet? Sunny? Dark?")
- Generate a word bank for your students to use, including words such as landfill, garbage, sun, oxygen, animals, insects, water, heat, lining, gravel, drainage pipe, plastic layer, dirty soil layer, etc.
Landfill Cross-Section Labels:
- Lining
- Gravel
- Drainage pipe
- Garbage
- Plastic layer
- Dirty soil layer
To facilitate learning and discussion, here are some questions you can explore with students:
- Why do you think a landfill is buried underground?
- About 750 to 800 truckloads of garbage are brought to a landfill every day! Is this more or less than you expected? Why?
- How do you think people and environments are impacted by a landfill? What can be done about it?
Tell your students they will learn more about the landfill throughout the next few lessons as they discover the science of decomposition and why Zombie Guacamole exists at all!
Digging for Trash: Dr. Rathje’s Research (5 minutes)
Next, let’s learn more about the research that Dr. Rathje conducted on landfills. Remember, Dr. Rathje was the scientist who discovered the mysterious Zombie Guacamole!
Start playing the William Rathje, Garbologist - Talkin Trash video:
- Pause at 1:49 and ask:
- Why did Dr. Rathje call the landfill “the heart of America”? What can we learn about the U.S. based on this research?
- How deep are they digging for trash? Why is it important to dig so far down?
- Stop the video at 2:22 and ask: What does Dr. Rathje say happens to food and organic waste? Why do you think it does not completely decompose?
Multimodal Representation Practice (15 minutes)
Throughout Lesson 1, students have collected their initial ideas, understandings, and wonderings about the phenomenon of Zombie Guacamole. Using the multimodal thinking scaffold below, students will have an opportunity to practice their multimodal representation skills by working in groups of 3-4 students.
First, invite students to independently consider their ideas in response to the prompt “Why did the guacamole not decompose?” and record their thinking on the blank Zombie Guacamole Multimodal Model Scaffold activity sheet. Feel free to make your own copy if you'd like to edit this template!
You may support students in their thinking by asking these questions (also included on the activity sheet):
- What did you notice, wonder, and know in this lesson?
- What knowledge do you have from prior learning or from your family and community? What does this phenomenon remind you of?
- What language resources do you have that are related to this topic? Could you express your ideas in another language?
- How might you share your knowledge and ideas with your classmates without telling them directly?
After students have had time to consider their ideas and possible ways of representing these ideas, they can share and compare ideas with their group members. Encourage students to have fun and use their creativity in sharing their ideas. For example, they can use movement or gesture, storytelling, visual art, song and rhyme, facial expressions, or communicate in languages other than English. Students can think of this activity as being similar to charades! Do your best to make this playful and low-stakes and validate the ideas that students share.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- As you engage with the Zombie Guacamole story and the videos, encourage students to share any connections they notice between these resources and their prior experiences in their homes, families, and communities. Affirm these connections as valid and relevant contributions to your collective scientific inquiry. If you are using a class KLEWS chart, consider recording these ideas on the chart for students to see and build upon throughout the unit.
- In this first lesson, we are just beginning to open up conversations that support critical consciousness, engagement with consequential concerns, and critical rightful presencing of marginalized communities. Students may raise important critical questions in these first few lessons, such as the examples below. If and when they do, consider engaging in group sense-making that is responsive to students’ interests. You can also encourage these lines of questioning and let students know we will explore these questions later in the unit. To support student-centered inquiry, discussions and learning activities should be guided by the questions and knowledges that students themselves generate.
- Why would we want to know or care about where our garbage goes?
- Where are landfills located and why does it matter?
- As a society, is a landfill the best we could do with our trash? What are other possible alternative systems?
- The contemporary environmental justice movement in the U.S. emerged in response to the environmental harms of landfills and toxic waste dumping sites. For example, EJ leaders Hazel M. Johnson and Dr. Robert Bullard fought directly against the disproportionate burdening of Black communities with these negative impacts. To learn more about these histories of intersectional environmentalism, check out Leah Thomas’ book The Intersectional Environmentalist or this video, The Intersectional History of Environmentalism. To learn more about environmental justice, you can also check out this article entitled The Environmental Justice Movement and these videos, Environmental Justice, Explained or A Brief History of Environmental Justice.
Concluding Reflection
What kinds of things do you throw away when you are at home? At school? How do you throw things away in these two places? What do you think is happening to them now?
Lesson 2
Lesson 2: Decomposition Detectives
Lesson Overview
During our last lesson, you learned about the mystery of the Zombie Guacamole and how Dr. Rathje discovered a bowl of perfectly preserved guacamole that was 25 years old! You may be wondering why this bowl of guacamole didn’t decompose. Let’s try to find the answer to this question by studying the work of other researchers and their observations of objects in various states of preservation and decomposition!
In this lesson, students will participate in a jigsaw reading activity to begin understanding what is needed for decomposition to occur. The readings support students to explore the natural kinds that are involved in decomposition: oxygen, water, temperature, and sunlight.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-LS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Decomposition Detectives Jigsaw Reading (25 minutes)
Share with students that they are going to work in small groups to figure out why something decomposed when it shouldn’t have or stayed preserved when it should have rotted away.
In your materials folder, there are five articles about decomposition. Split your class into five small groups and hand out copies of one article for each group to read as well as copies of the Exploring the Reading activity sheet for each student. Ask students to read through their group’s article and work together with their group members to answer the questions on their handout. Their job is to try and figure out what natural kinds were involved or missing in their story of decomposition.
Jigsaw Reading Handouts:
- Beef Jerky
- Food - Then and Now
- Mummy Mystery
- Museum Art - Preserving Against Time
- Wooly Mammoth Sparks Debate
Ask each group to identify one representative to share what their article was about and name one or two factors that were at play. As each group is sharing, ask the other students in your class to write down key ideas in their science journal.
Then, as a whole class, create a list of the factors that were identified in the five stories. To make the connection back to the Zombie Guacamole mystery, facilitate a group discussion about whether and how these natural kinds are present in a landfill.
Multimodal Representation Practice (15 minutes)
Ask your students to reference their multimodal representations from Lesson 1 regarding “Why did the guacamole not decompose?” Prompt students to look for any references they may, or may not, have made to these natural kinds (you might also refer to them as abiotic or nonliving environmental factors). Using the second Multimodal Model Scaffold or space in their science journals, invite students to analyze and represent how a factor described in one of the readings may have influenced the Zombie Guacamole.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- Throughout this unit, we use the terms “natural kinds” and “species” rather than the terms that are more commonly used in Western science, “abiotic” and “biotic” factors. We do so in order to intentionally challenge the living versus nonliving binary that is closely related to colonial ideas of human-nature separation and human supremacy. Referring to “natural kinds” and “species” allows us to recognize the agency and dignity of these entities rather than seeing them merely as “factors” of an ecosystem.
Rather than binary categorizations, we encourage focusing on interactions, interconnections, and interdependencies among and between natural kinds and species. This relational perspective is important for healing our earth as well as sustaining multiple cultural knowledge systems, particularly Indigenous ways of knowing.
To learn more about this reframing of complex socio-ecological systems, check out these educator frameworks from Learning in Places: Complex Socio-Ecological Systems and Relationships in Socio-Ecological Systems.
Concluding Reflection
Is there anything in your home or community that has lasted a very long time? What helped it last and has it changed over time?
Lesson 3
Lesson 3: Decomposition Superheroes
Lesson Overview
In the last lesson, students completed a jigsaw reading activity to learn about the natural kinds that are involved in decomposition: oxygen, water, temperature, and sunlight. Today, students will continue exploring what is needed for decomposition to occur by getting to know some of the species that are decomposition superheroes: fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates!
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-LS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Meeting the Decomposition Superheroes (10 minutes)
Hand out copies of the Video Accompaniment Decomposers graphic organizer and prepare your students to watch a short video about decomposers. Play the Decomposers video and ask students to fill out the graphic organizer while they watch.
After watching the video, invite students to share their noticings, wonderings, and connections to what they already know. In this whole-class discussion, emphasize that there are three main types of decomposers: fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates (which are animals without backbones, like earthworms).
Modification: To provide an additional challenge, do not tell students the three categories yet. Instead, ask students to group the decomposers into categories based on similarities and differences in the next activity.
Getting to Know the Decomposition Superheroes (15 minutes)
After watching the video, organize students into small groups with 3-5 students per group. Give a set of Decomposer Cards to each group and ask them to spend several minutes reading through a few cards. Then, encourage students to put the cards into three categories: fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates.
Invite students to discuss the following prompt in their small groups: What do you think it would be like to be a fungus? A bacteria? An invertebrate? Encourage students to imagine physical, sensory, emotional, and other experiences that these species may have. Students can use their bodies and voices to act out what it would be like to be each species. Don’t be afraid to get silly!
Multimodal Representation Practice (15 minutes)
Then, pass out art supplies and invite students to create a portrait of one type of decomposer of their choosing. Ask students to draw a picture of their decomposer (and feel free to include plenty of superhero features, like a cape or mask!). Ask students to add written and/or drawn descriptions of some of their superhero’s special abilities based on the information from the Decomposer Cards. Feel free to post students’ decomposition superhero representations on a classroom wall! This creative activity is another opportunity for students to practice multimodal representation of their knowledge and learning.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- Please see the considerations in Lesson 3 about the language of “natural kinds” and “species” as opposed to “abiotic” and “biotic” factors.
- As students create their portraits of decomposition superheroes, consider inviting students to incorporate prior knowledge from their homes, families, and communities related to these species. For example, students may be familiar with culturally specific stories and relationships with a particular type of mushroom or insect. Sustaining these forms of knowledge and highlighting it within the classroom is crucial for cultivating students’ sense of connectedness, care, and respect for more than humans.
Concluding Reflection
Natural kinds and species that assist in decomposition are part of our environmental community. How are our activities (individual or collective) helping or harming them? How can we care for their well-being?
Lesson 4
Lesson 4: The Race to Decomposition (Part 1)
Lesson Overview
What are the significant factors influencing the decomposition of organic matter? Over the past couple of lessons, students have learned about how different species as well as natural kinds like water, temperature, sunlight, and oxygen are involved in the decomposition of organic matter. Today, your students will begin an experimental challenge focused on decomposition.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-LS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
The Race to Decomposition Part 1 (30 minutes)
Watch the Race to Decomposition - Part 1 video with your students. Support students to follow Shannon’s instructions and set up an investigation in which they try to decompose a piece of organic matter, like an apple core, faster than any other team in their class.
Once you finish watching the video, pass out a jar and a sample of organic material like a piece of fruit or bread to each group of 4-5 students. Ask them to begin the Race to Decomposition by collaboratively completing the Race to Decomposition Engineering and Design Flow Chart activity sheet. Have your students decide and write down what factors they will be manipulating to decompose their organic material.
Over the next several weeks, ask students to track how their jar is looking every few days. Remind them to write down the date and time of each check-in and capture any observations they have or changes they make to the jar. Invite students to practice scientific sketching each time they check in with their jars. To learn more about scientific sketching, check out this article entitled Sketching for Observation.
If you want to engage your students in additional science practices such as forming a hypothesis, making predictions, and taking measurements, you are welcome to utilize and/or modify the Race to Decomposition Supplement.
Innovation Spotlight: The Roots of “Zero-Waste” Living (10 minutes)
Remind students that in this unit we are learning about what happens when we throw something away. Why do some things decompose and others don’t? How can we act in ways that protect the lands and species around us?
Ask students what comes to mind when they hear the phrase “zero-waste.” Have they heard this term before? What do they think it means?
Share with students that zero-waste is a movement that encourages people to reduce their use of disposable plastic and pay closer attention to what they use and throw away. Although zero-waste has become more popular recently, it has been practiced in many communities of color and immigrant communities for a long time! For example, this includes reusing plastic containers to store anything from sewing supplies to leftovers from last night’s dinner! Another example is repairing or repurposing clothing rather than throwing it away. These practices show a lot of creativity and care for human communities and the more-than-human world.
For more information about the zero-waste movement and its roots in communities of color, check out this podcast episode: Youth Takeover: Zero-Waste Living Has Long Roots in Communities of Color.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- Foregrounding the contributions and innovations of BIPOC communities is a crucial practice within culturally sustaining and justice-centered pedagogies. These liberatory stories are often not told within educational systems and are important for global majority students to feel a sense of belonging in learning environments and to feel that science is a powerful and useful tool for community uplift and wellbeing. If you are interested, please feel free to identify and share examples of BIPOC innovations related to this unit that are more relevant to the students, families, and communities you serve.
- While facilitating the activity about the zero-waste movement, consider attending to the tensions between individual actions and oppressive systems. Although it is important to honor the ecological practices and relationships that global majority communities have sustained over time, it is also critical to recognize how our actions are shaped by systemic inequities and injustices. Consider examining these systemic issues with students. For example: How are these innovative practices shaped by economic necessity and why do these realities exist? Why and how have we become plastic-dependent as a society and how is this related to fossil fuel industries? What are possible barriers to low-waste and zero-waste lifestyles and why might some people have more access to the lifestyle than others?
- We strongly encourage you to facilitate a group discussion related to the concluding reflection prompt for this lesson. This enables students to share connections to family and community knowledges that are relevant to the innovation spotlight and to the unit more broadly.
Concluding Reflection
In Washington state, about 1,000,000 tons of food waste is generated annually, and 35% of that is edible food that ends up in landfills! How does your family or community reduce the amount of food waste that is thrown away? OR What do you think your family or community could do to move toward a low-waste lifestyle?
To learn more about food waste and how to reduce waste, check out the Use Food Well Washington Plan from the WA Department of Ecology.
Lesson 5
Lesson 5: Decomposition in Other Ecosystems
Lesson Overview
So far in this unit, we have learned about natural kinds and species that play an important role in decomposition. We’ve also started our investigation in manipulating those factors in the Race to Decomposition activity.
In this lesson, we take a wider ecological view and explore how decomposition takes place in two different ecosystem examples, a nurse log and a whale fall! An ecosystem is a community of species and natural kinds interacting with each other and their local place. When a tree falls in a forest, or a whale sinks to the bottom of the ocean, decomposers are active in transforming these beings into nutrients to be reused throughout the ecosystem.
In this lesson’s activities, we'll explore the similarities and differences between these two examples and compare these ecosystem examples to what we have learned about landfills. In doing so, we will deepen our understanding of what is necessary for decomposition to take place.
If you are able to do so, we also encourage you to facilitate a field experience with students on your school campus to explore a real-life example of decomposition!
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-LS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Decomposition in Two Ecosystems (20-40 minutes)
Share with students that we will be exploring examples of how decomposition occurs in different ecosystems. Watch the Whale Fall at Davidson Seamount video with the accompanying Field Guide. You may also want to project the Whale Fall Posters from NOAA and explore the images together.
To learn about nurse logs, you can explore RedWood Nurse Log 360, a short video about nurse logs in redwood forests. It has a unique feature of being a 360° view so students can explore the forest floor in all directions. Other resources to check out are this Rotting Log Wildlife image, this Nurse Log video from Nerdy About Nature, or this documentary from Art21 (start the video at 44:00).
Invite students to share what they notice about the ecosystems that develop around a whale fall and a nurse log. What similarities do they notice between these? What differences do they notice? What similarities and differences exist between these decomposition examples and a landfill? How do these examples compare to their Race to Decomposition jars? For example, students may note the absence of sunlight and photosynthetic organisms at the whale fall.
Decomposition in the Field (20-40 minutes)
If time and space permits, this lesson is a wonderful opportunity to go on a field experience with students to investigate a real-life example of decomposition. Identify a field site by finding a rotting log on your campus for students to observe. Damp leaf piles will also work well!
Before starting the field excursion, facilitate a discussion about what they think will be important to take note of at the field site and how they document to record their observations in their science journals. For example, students may want to use drawings, counting, verbal descriptions of natural kinds such as sunlight, air, temperature, moisture, and other ways to capture information!
Bring the Decomposer Cards and/or students’ Decomposition Superheroes posters. Work together to see how many species can be found at your field site!
At the field site, encourage students to explore the rotting log and make observations in their science journals. You may want to support students’ inquiry by offering sample questions to explore the decomposing matter:
- Describe the larger habitat in which you found this rotten log. Make note of any plants, animals, or fungi!
- Observe the log (no touching yet!) and record what you see in words or drawings.
- How does the log smell?
- Touch the wood. How does it feel? Is it moist or dry?
- Tap on the log. Does it make a sound?
- Is there bark on this log? Is it loose or lying on the ground?
- Are there holes or other places where you can look? What do you see?
- What is underneath the log? Find out by gently rolling it onto its side. Roll it back to its original position when done observing.
- If part of the log splits off, what do you see?
After the field excursion, invite students to share their key observations from the field site. What did they notice? What are they wondering about? What connections did they make to the learning we have done so far in this unit?
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- In this lesson, students explore different ecosystems and the relationships and interactions that make up these ecosystems. As you facilitate these explorations, consider how students can learn about ecosystems through multiple sensemaking modalities such as storytelling, perspective-taking, art-making, and direct sensory engagement. In addition, you can invite students to share their prior cultural, family, and community knowledge related to these and other ecosystem examples. Being creative and expansive about all the ways we can know an ecosystem is an important way to practice culturally sustaining pedagogies.
- This lesson is also a great opportunity to incorporate connections to traditional ecological knowledge, Indigenous knowledge systems, and other forms of place-based expertise. To learn more about traditional ecological knowledge and the importance of sustaining these knowledges, check out this video entitled Two-Eyed Seeing: Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge.
Concluding Reflection
Which of these ecological systems would you want to know more about? What else would you want to know? How do you think you could find out?
Lesson 6
Lesson 6: Plants! The Nutrient Bridge
Lesson Overview
In the last lesson, we explored how decomposers cycle nutrients in different ecosystem examples like nurse logs and whale falls. In this lesson, we investigate the relationships between plants and these decomposers and how plants play a role in nutrient cycling within ecological systems.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-PS3-1
Main Activities and Materials
Why is Decomposition Important? (5 minutes)
At this point in our unit, the Race to Decomposition should be underway and students should know the relationships needed for decomposition to occur: interactions between species like fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates, and natural factors like water, heat, sunlight, and oxygen.
To remind ourselves of the learning we’ve done in previous lessons, invite students to share their ideas about this question: Why is decomposition so important? Why not just let our food waste sit preserved in a landfill like the Zombie Guacamole? You may want to display the question on the board or a piece of chart paper, and record students’ ideas as they share.
Students may bring up these or other considerations:
- There is a limited amount of space on this planet and we shouldn’t leave things just lying around.
- Landfills cause air and water pollution, which are unhealthy for people and other beings.
- We need decomposition to help return nutrients from organic matter back into the soil.
Affirm the ideas that students have shared about why decomposition is important. Remind students that we have built an understanding of how decomposers break down organic material. Now, we’ll take a look at the relationships between plants, decomposers, and us!
Time Warp! (5 minutes)
Share with students that we’ll be visiting a compost pile by watching a video of fruits and vegetables decomposing over 74 days. Don’t worry! It’s sped up so it will only take a few minutes. Ask students to watch carefully to spot the different factors of decomposition at play.
Start playing the Fruit and Vegetable Decomposition, Time-lapse video
- As you watch the video, invite students to call out which decomposition factors they are seeing as the fruits and vegetables break down. They might notice the flies (invertebrates), the mold (fungus), and perhaps some other factors too.
- Near the end of the video, you will see a potato beginning to sprout. Students will likely notice this and wonder what is going on. After the video ends, ask your students, “What do you think is going on with that potato? Why is it sprouting?”
How Do Plants Grow? (20 minutes)
Begin this activity by asking your students: “What process does a plant use to convert energy from the sun into a usable form of energy for plant growth?” Your students will likely be familiar with the concept of photosynthesis. Share with students: “Yes, photosynthesis is the process where plants use carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to produce energy! But did you know that plants need other help as well to survive?”
“Have you ever seen fertilizer or manure added to the school grounds or farms around your community, or perhaps in a garden at home? Just like you might need Vitamin C or calcium to grow big and strong, plants need nutrients too, like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Let’s take a look at how plants get help from the soil they are growing in!”
Share with students that you will soon hand out activity sheets so students can work together to understand the relationships between plants and soil. First, let’s look at asparagus together, as an example, and see what nutrients it needs!
Project Asparagus- How do plants affect the soil? on the board.
Notice… The horizontal line in the middle of the graph marked “starting amount” represents the level of the nutrient before plants were grown in the soil. The bars indicate whether the amount of a nutrient in the soil either increased (more in the soil) or decreased (less in the soil) after the plants grew.
Also notice… If there isn’t a bar visible on the graph for a particular nutrient, the level in the soil didn’t change. The graph shows the change in the amount of these three nutrients after plants have grown in the soil compared with the amount before the plants grew.
So, let’s take a look at the levels of nutrients in the soil after asparagus has been planted and grown in the soil for many days. Was there MORE, LESS, or the SAME amount of each nutrient in the soil after the plant grew?
There was:
A LOT LESS nitrogen
A LITTLE LESS phosphorus
The SAME potassium
Divide students into pairs or groups of three and distribute one vegetable activity sheet for each group. Ask students to work together to review the graph and fill in the bottom section with their observations about plant nutrient amounts. Next, each group should find another group to share and compare their plant data.
Once your students have completed their analysis and interpretation of the graphs, facilitate a whole group discussion about what they learned from the data. Invite students to share their ideas about this question: What are the relationships between plants, nutrients, soil, and decomposers?
Emphasize the takeaway that plants need nutrients to grow leaves and fruit, and species (like fungus, bacteria, and invertebrates) and natural kinds (like water, heat, sunlight, and oxygen) help return nutrients to the soil through the process of decomposition.
Multimodal Representation Practice (10 minutes)
For this multimodal representation opportunity, offer students this prompt: Imagine and create a depiction to communicate what it would be like to be a plant. Students may choose a plant that was included in the data activity or another one they are familiar with. What would it be like to be in these relationships with nutrients, soil, and decomposers?
Encourage students to share their ideas and multimodal depictions with each other.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- This lesson and the next lesson highlight the interdependence between species and natural kinds in our ecosystems. In learning about these relationships, it is important to emphasize the care and agency involved in these forms of relationality. This lens is central in many non-dominant knowledge systems, especially Indigenous ways of knowing, and is an important complement to the descriptions of energy and nutrient cycling that are common in Western scientific descriptions.
Concluding Reflection
How are plants cared for by other elements and beings? And how do plants care for them?
Lesson 7
Lesson 7: Observing and Describing Relationships
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, we dive deeper into exploring the interactions between different species and natural kinds within an ecosystem. Students will practice using scientific vocabulary and visual diagramming to represent food webs and other relationships in the ecosystems we have encountered. In doing so, students build their understanding of the interdependence between species and natural kinds in a healthy ecosystem.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-LS2-1/5-PS3-1
Main Activities and Materials
The Importance of Plants (10 minutes)
To begin, remind students about the data exploration they completed during the previous lessons about plants, nutrients, soil, and decomposers. Then, ask students, “So we know that decomposition is important because it cycles matter (in the form of nutrients) into the soil that plants need to survive. But why are plants important?”
Give students a few minutes to think individually. Then, ask students to turn to the person next to them and generate two reasons why they think plants are important. After a few minutes, invite students to share their ideas with the class and record their responses on the board. Students may share these ideas, among others:
- Plants play important roles in the larger ecosystem
- Plants are eaten by animals and people
- Plants are important for a variety of cultural and spiritual reasons
- Plants provide shelter for insects, birds, and other animals
- Some plants are medicinal and can help us feel better when we are sick
- Plants produce energy from the sun
- Plants are important for cycling energy and matter through an ecosystem
- Plants are beautiful and can help us feel calmer or happier
Who Is Part of the Ecosystem? (10 minutes)
Based on students’ expressed interest, select one ecosystem to explore in greater depth: the nurse log, whale fall, or local example. (You can refer back to the Lesson 5 Concluding Reflection responses to gauge students’ interest!)
Rewatch the videos from Lesson 5 or revisit the outdoor area where field observations were originally gathered. Ask students to identify each organism they notice in the area and describe the organism’s role in the ecosystem. As they do so, add the name and role of each organism to the whiteboard or a piece of chart paper. Students can also identify the natural kinds that are present in the ecosystem. Spread out the names so that there is space in between to add details later.
To support this activity, you can introduce relevant scientific terminology that students can use to describe the organisms and how they interact with other species in the ecosystem. Feel free to use the Scientific Terms for Students handout as a supporting resource if needed:
- Producer: organisms that create their own energy from the sun
- Herbivore: organisms that consume plants
- Carnivores: organisms that consume other animals
- Scavengers: organisms that consume waste from other organisms
- Ecosystem: community of species and natural kinds that interact in relationship with a specific place or geographic area. These species and natural kinds are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
Note: These conversations involve some speculation about the activities of an organism within an ecosystem. It is important to support students to use their observations as relevant evidence to support the claims they make about the ecosystem.
What Are the Relationships Between These Organisms? (15 minutes)
After students have identified the organisms they observe in the ecosystem, invite them to describe how each organism is related to one or more of the other organisms. Prompt students to consider different types of interactions that species may have with each other, such as: eating and being eaten, providing shelter and safety, providing physical structure or support, providing nutrients in the form of waste, providing water, and more. As they discuss their ideas and arrive at consensus, add arrows, sketches, and text descriptions to the whiteboard to capture the relationships (or invite students to add these contributions themselves!).
Then, lead a discussion with the following guiding questions:
- What are the components of this web of relationships? (Living organisms with different roles and relationships with each other.)
- How are these organisms connected to each other? (They interact in many different ways, including: eating and being eaten, providing shelter and safety, providing physical structure or support, providing nutrients in the form of waste, providing water, etc. When organisms eat each other, this translates into passing on nutrients and energy from one organism to the next.)
- What happens when we remove certain types of organisms from the web? You can cover all the producers or scavengers in the diagram and predict what would happen if those species were not present in the ecosystem. (The processes of cycling nutrients and energy will not occur without producers and decomposers. What other forms of support and relationality would be missing?)
- Why is it important that energy and matter move through ecosystems? What do organisms do with their energy? (Many things, including body repair, growth, motion, maintaining body temperature, reproduction.)
As a movement-based option for visualizing the relationships between organisms in the ecosystem, consider inviting students to take on the role of different organisms. Use a ball of yarn to map out the relationships and demonstrate how interconnected the organisms are. Feel free to use different colors of yarn to indicate different types of relationships – or get creative in other ways!
Locating Ourselves Within the Web (5 minutes)
Finally, invite students to consider: “How are human beings part of this web of relationships? How might humans impact this ecosystem positively or negatively?” Ask a few students to share their ideas with the class and see if there is consensus among the other students. Add a label for humans to the diagram and connect it to other species via arrows and descriptions of the interactions. Students should recognize that they are also part of the ecosystem and therefore are both dependent on the ecosystem AND can have impacts on the ecosystem and the organisms that live within it.
Throughout this activity and class discussion, listen for these key ideas about how this web of relationships relates to insights from previous lessons about decomposition and its importance:
- Food webs show how matter cycles and energy flows through an ecosystem.
- Plants are important to the ecosystem because they are a key link between transferring energy from the sun to other organisms as they eat plants and/or the organisms that eat plants.
- Decomposers are also crucial to the ecosystem because they cycle matter and energy from other organisms back into the soil for plants to use.
- All the energy that animals use originates from the sun.
- Humans are part of the ecosystem and can have impacts on it.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- In this lesson, we hope to guide students to consider the many different forms of relationality, gifts, nourishment, and care that organisms provide to each other. In looking beyond the typical classroom focus on food chains and food webs, we are building a more complex, expansive, culturally sustaining, and scientifically accurate understanding of ecosystem interactions and relationships. To learn more about principles of socio-ecological reciprocity and interdependence from an Indigenous perspective, check out Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essay The Serviceberry.
- This lesson is heavily focused on student discussion and collaborative sensemaking. We encourage you to consider how you can authentically facilitate student-centered inquiry by building from students' prior knowledge and curiosity. The goal of this lesson is not to arrive at specific predetermined understandings, but rather supporting students to ask their own questions related to these topic areas and engage in collective inquiry together.
Concluding Reflection
How are you a part of this system of animals and plants? How do you influence it? What beings are you in a reciprocal relationship with?
Lesson 8
Lesson 8: The Race to Decomposition (Part 2)
Lesson Overview
In Lesson 4, students met Shannon and learned about her disappearing apple core. They created Race to Decomposition designs in small groups to determine how best to set up an environment to decompose a piece of organic material. In Lessons 5 through 7, students learned about the important role of decomposition within ecosystems and how it sustains the relationships between species and natural kinds.
In this lesson, students revisit the Race to Decomposition and reflect on the results of their investigation. Today’s focus is to identify or imagine the ecosystems and relationality taking place in the Race to Decomposition jars. This experiment deepens students’ understanding of why the Zombie Guacamole did not decompose, possible challenges within our current waste management system, and how these challenges are related to the disruption of healthy ecosystem relationships.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-LS2-1
Main Activities and Materials
Synthesizing Our Knowledge (10 minutes)
Invite your students to think back to your last few lessons about decomposition, ecosystems, and relationality. Working in small groups or individually, ask them to answer the following questions in their science journals:
- Have there been any significant developments in your decomposition jar?
- Describe any relationships among natural kinds or identifiable species in your jar.
- Does the inside of your jar resemble an ecosystem? Why or why not?
- Is there potential for ongoing movement of nutrients, energy, and matter in this jar if it stays closed? Or stays in the classroom? Why or why not?
- Why are decomposers important in their local ecosystems?
- Through this experiment, what can you learn about natural systems of cycling of matter and energy? What new ideas do you have about why the Zombie Guacamole did not decompose?
Revisiting the Race to Decomposition (20 minutes)
Watch a video update from Shannon in which she checks in on her jar. Ask students to pay attention to the observations and changes that Shannon makes in her experiment.
After watching the video, invite students to revisit their jars and see if they would like to make any changes to their setup. Although this is not an experiment with precise controls, you may still encourage the strengthening of science practices such as taking measurements, making careful observations, and making updates and improvements in the design. Ask your students to create a scientific sketch of the decomposition process within their group’s jar. Encourage them to reconsider the variable(s) of decomposition they chose to manipulate if decomposition is not progressing as they had hoped.
Continue tracking the Race to Decomposition for the next few weeks or until each group believes they have successfully decomposed their organic matter. You may want to revisit the questions in the Synthesizing our Knowledge section above. You may also consider highlighting any jars that had unique setups and observations.
To debrief the Race to Decomposition investigation, ask students to share what similarities or differences they notice between the setup of the jars and that of a landfill. What similarities or differences do they notice between their jars and the ecosystems we explored in Lessons 5 through 7?
Innovation Spotlight: Storytelling for Environmental Justice (10 minutes)
Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities – or people of the global majority – have been fighting against the negative impacts of garbage for a long time! This includes fighting against plastic pollution. Plastic is made from fossil fuels like oil and natural gas, and it doesn’t decompose for many, many years. Plastics that we throw away can harm a lot of species, natural kinds, ecosystems, and human communities – especially communities of color. Because of this, plastic pollution is an environmental justice issue. We’ll learn more about this in the next lesson!
Shilpi Chhotray is an activist and the host of a podcast called People Over Plastic. She uses storytelling to advocate for social justice by bringing together BIPOC artists, community leaders, business owners, lawyers, and more to share their experiences. Their stories focus on the need for changes throughout our systems to protect human and more-than-human communities.
To learn more about how storytelling can change the world and create more fair systems, check out the People Over Plastic podcast, the Instagram page, or this article about Shilpi’s work.
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- Storytelling is an important practice for sustaining and sharing knowledge in many communities, especially those of the global majority. They can be a way to communicate collective histories, values and ethics, scientific expertise, and more. As demonstrated by the example of Shilpi Chhotray’s podcast, storytelling is also an important way to bring together communities and build movements to advocate for change in response to social and environmental injustices.
- We strongly encourage you to facilitate a group discussion related to the concluding reflection prompt for this lesson. This enables students to share connections to family and community knowledges that are relevant to the innovation spotlight and to the unit more broadly.
Concluding Reflection
What kinds of stories have you heard in your family or community? What have you learned from hearing and/or sharing these stories? Were any of these stories related to how we care for human and more-than-human communities?
Lesson 9
Lesson 9: Where is “Away”?
Lesson Overview
In this lesson, we deepen our understanding of what happens to garbage and where it goes when we throw it away. We explore how landfills impact ecosystems and human communities and how they are related to the concept of environmental justice.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-ESS3-1
Main Activities and Materials
Virtual Field Trip (10 minutes)
Begin the lesson by asking your students to think back to Lesson 1, when they explored what the inside of a landfill looks like. Let them know that they are going to take a more local virtual field trip to see how our garbage gets to a landfill, and what happens to it when it arrives!
Hand out a copy of the Columbia Ridge Landfill Graphic Organizer to each student.
Watch this video about the Columbia Ridge Landfill, which is where garbage from the cities of Seattle and Portland goes. As you watch, have your students look for the answers to the questions on their activity sheet. Feel free to pause the video to write down their ideas on the board.
Once the video is finished, emphasize how many steps are needed to get our garbage to a landfill, and to deal with it once it’s there. Remind students that the Columbia Ridge Landfill is where garbage from the cities of Seattle and Portland goes. Ask students to consider the following questions:
- Where does the garbage from our town go?
- Is the journey for garbage from our town similar to or different from what you just learned about? How could you find out?
Share with students that now that we’ve learned about what happens to garbage on the way to and at the landfill, we’ll dive deeper into exploring the impacts that landfills have.
A Return to Dr. Rathje’s Research (optional)
You may choose to return to Dr. Rathje’s research as your students build a more complex understanding of decomposition, ecosystems, and our societal relationships with waste.
Ask a student to refer to their Lesson 1 notes to give a summary of Dr. Rathje’s research and how we came to focus on the Zombie Guacamole phenomenon.
Start playing the Dr. Rathje, Garbologist - Talkin Trash video at 2:22:
- At the time of this video, what was taking up the most space in the landfill?
- What is Dr. Rathje’s message to us about what we can learn from the past and our observations?
The Impacts (15 minutes)
People try to make landfills safer in many ways, including plastic liners, pipes to collect drainage, and fans to contain the smell of the garbage. But even with those strategies, landfills still have negative social and environmental impacts. Let’s consider:
- How might human communities near a landfill be affected?
- How might other animals be affected?
- How might the air, water, soil, and other parts of the environment be affected?
Invite students to share their initial ideas based on what we have learned so far about landfills, and record their ideas on the board. Then, work together to deepen your understanding of these impacts by reviewing these slides as a whole class. Consider inviting students to take turns reading slides out loud.
Given these negative impacts of landfills on the environment and nearby communities, is our current waste management system fair or unfair? Share with students that when we throw something “away,” it doesn’t really go away. Our “away” is someone else’s “here”! Both locally and globally, these negative impacts are more likely to affect communities of color and low-income communities. This makes waste management an environmental justice issue.
Invite students to share any thoughts, feelings, or reactions that come up for them in response to this information.
Multimodal Representation Practice (15 minutes)
For this multimodal representation opportunity, prepare slips of paper with the names of different stakeholders and participants in our waste management system. This can include species like a seagull, maple tree, or centipede; natural kinds like air, soil, or water in the ocean; and human-created objects like a plastic bottle or computer.
Invite students to randomly select a slip of paper. Then, ask students to take the perspective of the species, natural kind, or object they selected. What would it be like to interact with a landfill (or our waste management system overall) as who or what they are? Invite students to create a way to communicate their stakeholder’s experience of the waste management system. They can use visual art, poetry, music, gesture and body movement, written text, and more!
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- To prepare for facilitating student learning about environmental justice, we encourage you to check out or revisit the background resources shared in the introduction to this unit.
- Discarded plastics, electronics, and other forms of waste are often exported from wealthy Global North countries to more vulnerable Global South countries, a phenomenon known as waste colonialism or waste colonization. In addition, poorer and less developed countries are often blamed for ecological challenges despite their relatively smaller contributions to the problems. To learn more about global environmental justice concerns related to waste management, check out these resources: Out of Sight, Out of Mind (podcast), How the Hell Did it Get HERE? (podcast), Discarded: Communities on the Frontlines of the Global Plastic Crisis (report), and What is Waste Colonization? (article).
Concluding Reflection
Choose any of the environmental impacts shared in this lesson. Who or what is responsible? What would repair, accountability, or justice look like for the people, ecosystems, and places involved?
Lesson 10
Lesson 10: Other Ways of Waste
Lesson Overview
In Lesson 9, we explored how waste makes its way to a landfill as well as some of the negative impacts of landfills and the waste that never makes it there. In this lesson, we explore alternative ways of managing waste that are sustainable, responsible, regenerative, and have significantly lower levels of adverse impacts on people and the environment. We draw insight and inspiration from the agricultural systems of ancient civilizations and contemporary farmers.
NGSS Performance Expectations addressed in this lesson: 5-ESS3-1
Main Activities and Materials
Exploring Multiple Systems and Relationships (40 minutes)
In this lesson, you will facilitate a visual and multimedia experience with your students to introduce them to multiple agricultural systems. This slides presentation includes speaker notes that you are welcome to reformat and edit to fit your purposes. For each featured system, we highlight the context, philosophy, and the design of the system itself (inputs and outputs). We encourage you to review the resources below to familiarize yourself with each agricultural system prior to facilitating the lesson.
To learn about the Aztec civilization's waste management system, read this fantastic article by NOAA researcher Martin Medina: The Aztecs of Mexico: A Zero Waste Society. From this article, we’ll focus on the use of chinampas, floating islands used for agriculture. Though the Aztecs did not invent chinampas — they were already being used by other native nations when the Aztecs founded their city — they leveraged the system to grow and thrive as a civilization.
To learn about Masanobu Fukuoka’s philosophy of natural farming, review these resources:
- What is Natural Farming (article)
- Food, Earth, Happiness (short version of full documentary)
To learn about Yoshida Toshimichi’s work related to fermented compost, review these articles:
- Farmer, Nutrition Activist Uses Fermentation Methods to Create Healthier School Lunches
- The Fermentation Prescription: Building Immunity from the Ground Up
Throughout this lesson, your students’ role is to observe, take notes on their noticings and wonderings, share their perspectives, and work together to discern the potential benefits and challenges of each system. Students should also examine the degree of care and relationality (think back to Lesson 7!) in these systems in comparison with the current system in the U.S. To support these comparisons and evaluate each system, you and your students can utilize the graphing tool below.
Consider the following two dimensions:
- Useful/Less Useful (Wasteful): Usefulness refers to how well the system makes use of materials that could otherwise be considered “waste.” For example, a household that practices a zero waste lifestyle with few things getting thrown away would rate high on the useful scale. Conversely, a wasteful system is one where significant waste is generated that is not put to any further use. A landfill would rate low on usefulness, because once something is in the landfill, it serves very little purpose.
- Relational/Disconnected: Relationality refers to the degree that a system is interconnected with social and ecological systems of matter and energy cycling. A system that is part of or successfully mimics ecological cycling is highly relational. A system that is isolated and separated from the ecosystem, people, community, and other forms of interconnectedness is very low on relationality.
These definitions are just a suggestion and starting point, and we encourage you to guide your students to create their own definitions for this activity. Remember, the goal is for students to have a process for evaluating and comparing different systems. We have provided a few warm up examples in the slideshow to practice with your students. Feel free to add or modify examples as you see fit!
Useful/Disconnected | Useful/Relational |
Wasteful/Disconnected | Wasteful/Relational |
After students analyze and compare the examples in the slideshow, you can facilitate a whole class discussion to debrief the activity. Invite students to consider these prompts: Given these alternative systems, what are some ways that we could rethink how we design and interact with our current waste management systems? How do these examples connect with practices or systems in your family, culture, or community?
Culturally Sustaining + Justice Centered Connections
- This lesson focuses on ancient and contemporary examples of waste management and food production systems that can serve as inspiration for imagining alternatives to our current unsustainable and unjust systems. There are many other traditions of regenerative practices across geographic regions and cultural communities. As you explore these examples with students, you may consider connecting with the different ancestral histories of food production in your own and your students’ families and communities. Feel free to add to or replace the examples that are provided in this lesson to make the learning more relevant for your students.
- Discussions of natural farming and other regenerative agriculture methods often invisibilize how Indigenous stewardship of lands and waters since time immemorial is a longstanding exemplar of regenerative worldviews and practices. To learn more about this, check out these two articles: Decolonizing Regenerative Agriculture: An Indigenous Perspective and Discover the Roots of Regenerative Agriculture in Indigenous Cultures.
- The agricultural systems featured in this lesson are alternatives to the system of industrial agriculture that is currently dominant within the U.S. Many features of industrial agriculture are related to social and environmental injustices, such as: monoculture and corporate control; application of chemical herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers that threaten human and ecological health; and exploitation of migrant, undocumented, and child farmworkers in the labor force. To learn more about these realities, check out these articles: Industrial Agriculture 101, History of Agricultural Labor in the US, and Children in the Fields: The Stories You Should Know.
Concluding Reflection
Envision a society where there is very little waste, and any waste that exists is handled in ways that do not harm people or the planet. What do you see, hear, smell, taste, or feel?