Lesson Plan for Grade Two Art, Math, English, Social Studies and Health 

Environmental Responsibility: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Intro: The theme of this mini-unit is to increase students’ awareness of how the choices they make each day affect the environment in the local community as well as on a global scale. Students will investigate four ways to reduce waste, to recycle, and to reuse. As they carry out their investigations they will work toward creating a final project: a 12-month calendar illustrating the various ways they could encourage their families and classmates to be better environmental citizens.

Outcomes/Indicators:
  • Arts Education:
    • CP2.7 Create visual art works that draw on observations and express ideas about community.
    • CP2.8 Create visual art works using a variety of visual concepts.
  • English Language Arts: 
    • CC2.1 Compose and create a range of visual, multimedia, oral and written texts that explore identity, community and social responsibility
  • Math:
    • P2.1 Demonstrates an understanding of repeating patterns. 
  • Social Studies:
    • DR2.2 Analyse the influence on the actual environment on the local community.
    • PA2.3 Analyse the rights and responsibilities of citizens in the school and local community. 
  • Health Education:
    • USC2.4  Examines social and personal meanings of “respect” establishes ways to show for self, persons, living things, possessions, and the environment.
Duration: Two weeks

Summary of Activities:

Lesson 1

Subject: Math
Time: 60 mins

Materials: various calendars and Black line master 1

Lesson Objectives:
  • Establish a link between the days, weeks and months.
  • Recognize the order of the days of the week, months, and seasons.
  • Recognize the repeating patterns in a calendar.

Vocabulary: Week, Calendar, Month, February, August, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, November, December, January, Day, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
Pre-activity (10 mins): Show students the different calendars and ask them if they know what they are.
Are there things that are the same on all the calendars? What is different? Can you name the days of the week? Poem that could also be read.
Activity (40 mins): Give each student a calendar and table containing the days of the weeks and the months. Have each student cut out the labels. They can manipulate the labels placing them in the correct order. Continue to ask questions why do you know that Monday is before Tuesday etc. as students become more confident with the order of the days they can write or glue them on their calendar page. Once they days are on the calendar discussion can continue to which month it is and what day the month began, and how many days are in the month.After Activity (10 mins): Discuss with the students the patterns they discovered while working with the calendar and explain to them that they will be creating their own calendar. On their calendars they will be representing numerous ways to be helpful to the environment.

Optional: All the calendar pages could be made at this time or they could be made at the same time as the following lesson.

Calendar example

Calendar template   

Lesson 2: RECYCLE

Subjects: Health and Social Studies 

Time: 60 mins
Materials: Our Earth: How Kids are Saving the Planet by Janet Wilson, Recycle by Kay Barnham, and old magazines to cut out images for collages.
Lesson Objectives:
  • Analyse the influence on the actual environment on the local community.
  • Analyse the rights and responsibilities of citizens in the school and local community.  
  • Examines social and personal meanings of “respect” establishes ways to show for self, persons, living things, possessions, and the environment
Activity 1 (60 mins): Review what was discussed in lesson 1. Make a chart of what the students know about the environment, what they want to learn about the environment, and what they have learned about the environment fill out the first two columns with the students’ suggestions. (To be completed at the end of the lesson. Read Our Earth: How Kids Are Saving the Planet by Janet Wilson (2010) and discuss what they can do to save the planet.
After: Following the discussion each student will create a representation for their EE calendar an example of what they can do at school or home to help save the planet. Representations are collected to assemble after the final lesson.

Lesson #3 (95 min)

Activity 1: Worms: nature's recyclers

After: Create a representation of recycling

Activity 2: Save trees by making your own recycled paper

Activity 3: Mini landfill 


Lesson #4  
Activity 1: Earth day number sense 

Conclusion: Once the students have completed all the pages for their calendars, they can discuss what their calendar representations mean to them and how it will help to improve the state of the environment.