Future in the Bag Community Action Guide

Grades6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12Earth and Space Sciences, Civics

What it is

This guide will help students develop a reusable shopping bag swap station for a grocery local store.
Students will learn about the environmental impacts of single-use plastic bags and single-use plastic bag legislation.

Positives

This is a community action guide that will help teachers and students create and implement a local reusable bag program.
The guide contains reading material on single-use plastics.

Additional Prerequisites

Teachers will need to allocate an appropriate amount of time for planning and putting this project into action.
Some of the links in the guide do not work.

Differentiation

Schools could use this resource for a school-wide Earth Day service project.
Art classes could design and decorate reusable bags.
This is a "low floor, high ceiling" project as the basic idea of creating a reusable bag station is fairly simple, but the work can be taken further into areas such as public policy.
Civics classes could read about bag legislation and discuss how legislation works on the community, state, and national levels.

There is no contradiction in the article. This resource is recommended.

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Standards alignment · D4.7.6-8 + 9 more

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards

D4.7.6-8Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
D2.Civ.13.9-12Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.
D4.7.9-12Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.

Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.6-8.3Identify key steps in a text's description of a process related to history/social studies (e.g., how a bill becomes law, how interest rates are raised or lowered).

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

MS-ESS3-3.Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

Mathematics

HSS.IC.B.4(+)Use data from a sample survey to estimate a population mean or proportion; develop a margin of error through the use of simulation models for random sampling.
HSS.IC.B.6(+)Evaluate reports based on data (e.g., interrogate study design, data sources, randomization, the way the data are analyzed and displayed, inferences drawn and methods used; identify and explain misleading uses of data; recognize when arguments based on data are flawed).

Social Studies

6.3.5.CivicsPD.3:Propose a solution to a local issue after considering evidence and the perspectives of different groups, including community members and local officials.
6.3.5.GeoHE.1:Plan and participate in an advocacy project to inform others about the impact of climate change at the local or state level and propose possible solutions.
6.3.8.CivicsPD.2:Propose and defend a position regarding a public policy issue at the appropriate local, state, or national level.