5th Grade | Haagensen, Sarah

"I have traveled the land.
I have seen the world.
I have heard it all.

The questions of my childhood,
I have answered.

The things I have dreamed of,
I have done.

But when I look
into the eyes of an Elder,
I have not done enough."

     --Lincoln 'Ch'igin' Tritt (1946-2012)
        Chief of the Gwich'in Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government
        Fairbanks, Alaska

For the Classroom: 

2 - boxes of tissue
1 - Clorox Wipes
2 - Rolls of paper towel
1 - box of 24 pencils (Ticonderoga preferred)
2 - Dry erase markers (chisel tip)
1 - box of colored pencils
2 - glue sticks
1 - large eraser
1 - thick highlighter

Personal Supplies:

Water Bottle
Earbuds (not headphones)
1 - 1-inch 3-ring binder (with a pocket on the inside cover)
1 - package of 5 tab Write-On Binder dividers
3 - pocket folders
1 - composition notebook

The Green Team helps #RalyaRecycle!

Two weeks before winter break in 2023, I learned that we had a problem at Ralya. The recycling was all getting mixed together so there wasn't enough room for cardboard boxes in our bins. These boxes were ending up in the dumpster instead. When I posed this problem to my students they wanted to take a look for themselves. They found that paper wasn't ending up in our Paper Gator dumpster, some items were ending up in the recycling that shouldn't be, and still other things that could be recycled were ending up in the trash. We came back to the classroom and talked for an hour about students' solutions. The first: create The Green Team. We started small: just the 28 students in my classroom. Students felt we needed posters, videos and donations from community members to help their ideas come to life. Students were divided into four groups within our class to tackle these tasks. 

One group designed posters for our main entrance at Ralya and worked to determine common items that should be included on a classroom recycling poster.

Another group wrote letters to various community businesses asking them to support our initiative to help Ralya Recycle. Our goal was to receive support to purchase Green Team t-shirts and collapsible wagons to help with our weekly collection. From our board meeting student presentation on February 12th, the letters written by students, and word of mouth, we received several donations, including wagons from Walmart's Spark Good program, resources and monetary donations from MiSTEM Network, PaperGator Recycling, the Foundation for Haslett Public Schools, Granger Waste Services, T-Shirt Goods, and four members from our community. 

Two groups wrote their own scripts and worked on recording and editing videos. One to be a Call to Action, encouraging our Ralya students and community to recycle and help our planet. The other is a How to Recycle video to show students how to properly recycle here at school. Both of these videos will also encourage the community to use our Paper Gator dumpster properly. This will benefit Ralya directly through the funds we receive for our recycled paper. Both videos can be found on our Haslett YouTube page, or here:

 Call to Action video 

How to Recycle video  

My 2023-2024 students had grand plans for the future of The Green Team. They hope that this initiative will spread to the other Haslett school buildings and beyond! But for now it spread to 50 students in the 5th grade during the spring of 2024. At the end of February I opened up The Green Team to all 5th graders - 50 students signed up to help (essentially half of our grade!) I had enough students that I could create two teams so that students could rotate every two weeks and allow them to have a break.

In the fall of 2024, it will become a lunchtime club for any 5th graders who want to help make a difference. I have hopes that this will become a tradition at Ralya and that these 5th graders will continue this initiative through the rest of school and in life. 

 

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