Readers Respond: How Is Your Classroom Environmentally Conscious?

Responses: 4

From Beth Lewis, former About.com Guide

If you run a green classroom, share your ideas here - big or small - for how to minimize your classroom's impact on the environment.

I have a small compost pail in my classroom which really helps cut down the rubbish my class produces. The municipality won't pick it up (I'm working on that) so I just take it home and it gets picked up with my own compost. Our entire school has a GOOS box (good on one side) in our classrooms for papers that can be used for rough work, doodling, computations or whatever. We also have boomerang lunch once a week, which means the students must take home any garbage that their lunches contain. I find that if you practice what you preach, they will pick up on it and get on board, even to the point of giving reminders to slackers.
—Guest Patricia

I stole this idea and love it. My mentor teacher during student teaching used fabric to cover bulletin boards rather than butcher paper. The fun designs can be used year after year. She changed them two or three times a year, saving them for next year. They never fade in the sun like paper and are completely reusable. While it isn't necessary, sewing along the edges can increase longevity and decrease fraying on edges.
—Guest Elizabeth

1. Maintenance of green file - Collect environmental news clippings and file them. 2. Green Bulletin Board - Display environmental news, articles, poems, prize winners' names, etc. 3. Green Library Corner - Keep environmentally-themed books & magazines, etc. 4. Display TLM (teaching learning materials) made of waste materials. 5. Keep dustbins for sorting biodegradable and non-biodegradable wastes.
—Guest Dr.V.Krishnan

I saved paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls--(for sound and sight experiments), empty drink bottles with squirt lids--(for holding temepra paints and dispensing JUST the amount needed), cardboard from cereal boxes--(for letter and shape patterns), and Styrofoam egg cartons--(bottoms for holding tempera paints for projects, tops to blend and mix the colors in AND I would cut off two egg holders and make a container of ten for counting groups of 10s to make 100. The lids were great to pour the items into to be counted.) I'd also save lids from milk bottles and other bottles--(for experiments with wheels OR hot glue them on cardboard for designs) and old venetian blinds--(weave together to make a woven design after the children made designs on them with magic markers). As long as I could get enough of any one item so each child could have at least one item for a project, I would recycle anything. The art teacher never really had to supply arts/crafts items for my class. We had it stored and ready to use.
—Guest KDdidit