Favorite Lesson: LITTER! and a Freebie!

I wish I could have posted this sooner but I really wanted to wait until this weekend so I can share a freebie with y’all. This week we did one of my most favorite lessons EVER. It’s one of those “they will never forget this” lessons. (I love those) After lunch, the kiddos came back to our room looking like THIS: I stay outside making sure everyone says our “password” (word of the week) and you can hear them go dead silent. You can tell they are scared to tell me something is terribly wrong. Finally one of my kiddos gets up the nerve to say “Mrs. Wright, you made a huge mess at lunch time. You should have cleaned up.” HILARIOUS. I always tell them I didn’t do it and I blame it on them. “Who did this to our classroom?!” “You need to tell me the truth, we are not supposed to disrespect our class this way!” “I want someone to tell me who did it now.” Sure, it’s kind of mean but it gets them into the mindset of this is really bad. Finally I get someone to say “Someone else must have come in and did this. We should probably go tell the principal and have someone clean it up.” I was kind of sad that they expect someone else to come clean up for them. I did switch that mentality though. I assured them I would “tell our principal” but WE had to clean it up because it is our classroom. I love this process because the whole time we are cleaning you hear “this isn’t fair.” “This is gross.” I LOVE IT! (side note, I am sorry such a wordy post but I just love this lesson and hope you can do it!) To really show them how messy, dirty, and gross our room got I gave them each a baby wipe and we scrubbed tables and chairs top to bottom. (hehehe) Finally when our room was once again spotless, we all sat down and talked about how we felt. “Tired!” “Mad!” “Sad!” I told them that I thought we should write it in our journals. I led the entry with an anchor chart and they followed. Of course we then had the discussion about littering outside of the classroom and how someone else has to pick up our mess if we left it. Of course since most of them were pretty angry, they don’t want someone else to be that mad at them. After we do this lesson I always feel like they will never want to litter because they actually felt how bad it is. (Love her mad face!) Next week we dive into recycling which brings me to my freebie. Just as a quick assessment, we like to have the kiddos sort recyclable vs. non-recyclable. If you guys are working on this (or will be soon) I hope you can use this as well. And if you try the lesson to go along with it, I promise you wont be disappointed. Start saving that trash! Oh, and eat a banana before work and set it on some lucky kiddos desk. It REALLY gets the “ew” factor going! Recycling worksheet: You can grab the worksheet HERE. Happy teaching everyone!