Renewed Items

Grade 7 Physical Science - Mixtures and Solutions

Outcome MS7.2   Investigate methods of separating the components of mechanical mixtures and solutions, and analyze the impact of industrial and agricultural applications of those methods in Saskatchewan.  (h) Describe the scientific principles underlying a past or present industrial technology designed to separate mixtures (eg. recycling station).

This is an online scavenger hunt ending in a jigsaw approach to sharing information on the recycling of vehicle tires, milk cartons/jugs, plastic bottles paint, oil, electronics, aluminum cans, and steel.

This activity involves an online "scavenger hunt" as well as "jig-saw" learning.

Objectives

• Students will identify processes involved in the recycling of various materials.
• Students will identify reasons for recycling various materials.

Instructional Procedures

1) Show students an item that could be recycled and an item that it could be recycled into. (examples: an empty pop bottle → polar fleece sweater, or a metal can → piece of rebar, plastic milk jug → plastic lawn furniture)

2) Ask the students how these items are related. Explain that these are items that can be recycled (bottle, can, jug) and what they can be recycled into (fleece, rebar, lawn furniture).

3) The students will go on an online "scavenger hunt" to research their assigned recyclable item and then devise an imaginative presentation to share with the class or possibly a group of younger students. Presentations could be oral, power point, poster, demonstration, etc. They should strive to make them interesting.

4) Students will be divided into groups. Each group will be assigned a resource that can be recycled.

1. vehicle tires
2. milk cartons/jugs
3. plastic bottles (pop)
4. glass bottles
5. paint
6. oil
7. electronics
8. aluminum cans
9. steel

5) Each group will work from the supplied worksheet. Each worksheet lists key questions to be answered through the students' research and in their finished projects, as well as suggested links to find the answers. These worksheets can be put on the school's server so that the students do not need to type in the links, or they could be given a paper copy to work from. There is a teacher version of each worksheet that tells what information can be found on each website link. There are 9 worksheets, 1 for each recyclable material listed in Step 4.

6) Each worksheet includes a question on the processes used in recycling the item. The processes include things such as how the item is sorted (manually, using magnets, flotation, etc.), how the items are cleaned, and other process the item needs to go through before it becomes a useable material again.

7) When the students have completed their projects they should present them to the class. This ensures that the entire class gets all the information.

8) You may wish to have the students evaluate each others' presentations based on the key questions and on quality of work.

 Other Fun:

Processes of Recycling Crossword Puzzle

Processes of Recycling Wordfind Puzzle

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