Eight Earth Day Activities Your Students Will Love

Hi Teacher friends!

For a looong time, I thought of revamping my Earth Day unit… and it finally happened during this past week. If you have already bought it, please make sure to re-download from your “my purchases” link on TpT.

Let me show you what’s new:

But first, look at this cute but ALWAYS intentional Earth Day acrostic poem craftivity.

I have also added a cause and effect close read activity. You will find a slide in full color to print or project onto your Smartboard in order to model (or do a shared reading) with your students. I also added a black and white with a response sheet and materials for you to make an anchor chart.

In this pack you will also find a fact and opinion literacy center and anchor chart activity.

For all your kiddos (especially your English language learners) a set of vocabulary puzzles and a guide to teaching vocabulary the Marzano way!

If your students are like mine, they will love these Earth Day writing prompts:

I left the best for last! This is a super cool and insightful science experiment about water pollution. You need a clear container filled with water, food coloring, and a bunch of cleaning items like paper towels, sponges, dishwasher liquid, spoons, foil, etc. You can choose to do this activity in a whole group demonstration or you can also have your students do it in groups of three or four. I prefer the small groups setting because your students will get a chance to do the experiment themselves, and discuss the implications of water pollution. So here it goes:

1. Get materials ready

2. Put a drop or two of the food coloring in the cup with the clean water. The food coloring acts as the polluting agent.

3. Let your students pick what they need to use to clean the water. The whole idea is to show your students how hard it is to get the food coloring out of the water.

Spoons

Paper towels

Dish washing liquid

Foil

Let your students discuss! If you have access to BrainPop Jr. or Discovery streaming, show them a clip about water pollution… so sad, but our students need to see it! We should teach them some social and environmental awareness. On the other hand, this activity comes with a full booklet for your students to complete during this experiment using the scientific method!