How Can You Help Stop Food Waste?

• This slide deck can be used by educators to teach about food waste, why it is an important problem, and what students can do to avoid it.
• This slide deck is specific for schools in Maine, contains speaker notes, and provides an opportunity at the end of the presentation for students to share what they learned.

Positives

• This resource can easily be adapted to your own needs by making a copy and adding or removing any elements as needed.
• There are multiple opportunities for students to participate in the lesson through discussion.
• Statistics and data are presented in a way that is easy for even young students to understand.

Additional Prerequisites

• Some of the speaker notes are written as a script, with directions for speaker in parenthesis, but review speaker notes prior to teaching the lesson to assure you do not read directions out loud.
• Speaker notes mention that the cafeteria has a share basket, as well as other sorting stations indicated in slides 16-20. Make sure your cafeteria has these before mentioning them to students. 
• If you do not have stickers to give to students for sharing what they learned, remove the mention of stickers from slide 22.

Differentiation

• A shorter version of this slideshow is available here.
• This presentation would work well before or after a lesson on the effects of food waste on the planet.
• For students who are reluctant to share out, turn-and-talk or think-pair-share strategies can be used in the sections that require student participation.
• Students can create their own infographics or posters about food waste and how to stop it.

This resource addresses the listed standards. To fully meet standards, search for more related resources.