National Green Week 2009
First Place Literary Winner
Las Vegas, NV
Here's Michele Haldeman on the work done during Nation Green Week 2009:Our 3rd grade students work cooperatively to provide the labor necessary to collect and organize classroom recyclable collections. Students and staff participate in these recycling efforts. Each grade level is responsible for the collection of recyclable materials: plastic, cans, paper, and boxes. Those materials must then be collected from each class, transported to a central location (the multipurpose room), organized and then transported to the local recycling center.
Although we have a commercial paper recycling bin, one valiant teacher has been responsible to transporting cans, plastic and glass to the local recycling center every week. We need classroom bins, carts to move the recyclables from the classrooms to the central location, and bins to store the sorted materials until they are transported to the recycling center.
Here are a few writings from Wendell Elementary students:
Will the Earth Die? by Jacob
Will the Earth die? Do we care?If we cared would we kill all the trees for paper?
Would we dig big holes looking for gold?
If we cared would we throw trash out of our cars?
Would we dump chemicals into the rivers and lakes?
Would we care if all the birds died?
Would we care if all the fish in the oceans died?
Or, would we wait . . . until the Earth died?
If I could I would walk the whole Earth and pick up all the trash.
If I could I would make a car that makes the air cleaner.
If I could I would use coffee filters to get all the icky stuff out of the lake water.
If I could I would make everyone care about the Earth.
My Teacher’s Bad by Jeremy
My teacher’s bad.She leaves the lights on all the time.
She throws good paper away because one side has writing on it.
She never turns her computer off.
My teacher’s bad.
She throws candy wrappers on the ground outside.
She throws broken crayons away.
She drives to work every day by herself.
My teacher’s bad.
She washes her car every week.
She never saves anything.
She’s just bad.
She’s bad for the environment. She should know better.
The Meaning of Responsibility by Mah’Jahnae
Anyone can look the word responsibility up in a dictionary. The Webster’s New Riverside University Dictionary says that responsibility is either “the quality, state or fact of being responsible” or “something for which one is accountable.”I would tell everyone on Earth that they are responsible for the environment. I would use radio, television, newspapers, and the internet to teach everyone to reduce, recycle and reuse our resources. Everyone should ride a bus or a bike to work. People should use materials that come apart in the soil without leaving harmful chemicals behind.
Everyone needs to be responsible for keeping our planet, our home, clean and safe. Earth Day is every day!
The Aliens that Saved Earth by Analisa
One smoggy day I was walking to school and coughing and coughing. My Mama had said that there was a warning about the air on the news . . . the air was so bad it could make people sick or even die, but I had to walk to school anyway. We don’t have a car.Just then I saw a streak of fire cross the sky. It was like the comets and meteors we studied in science. It looked like it was headed straight for my school. Maybe I wouldn’t have to go to school today!
I walked a little faster and covered my mouth and nose with my hand. The air smelled really bad and just then I heard and saw a big crash! Did it hit my school? As I turned the corner I could see smoke rising in the air behind the school. I hoped that thing has crashed into the field so I wouldn’t have to go outside for recess in this stinky, smelly air. Then I heard the school fire alarm. A fire at school! Maybe I wouldn’t have to go to school for the rest of the year!
I turned around and almost ran home to tell my Mama. “Did you see what happened?” my Mama asked. “Yea, something like a meteor fell from the sky and it looked like it landed in the field behind school,” I said. “Well you won’t be going to school today unless I find out if it’s safe,” my Mama said.
We went inside and my Mama tried to call school, but the telephone was busy. I stayed home and watched TV. My Mama kept making me change the channel to the local news. We finally found out that a meteor had crashed into the field behind school and it was so hot that the school would be closed until it cooled off and somebody came and got it.
I got to stay home from school for three days, and then the firemen came to our neighborhood with a bus and said we would have to leave. No one would tell us why. As we walked outside to get on the bus I looked toward school and saw crazy green smoke.
“Mama look at the green smoke over by school,” I said. Mama turned her head to look at the huge green smoke blob. The blob was wiggling and dancing. It started to come apart into little puffs. The little puffs started moving up and down and sideways. We were all standing there like we were frozen watching the little green puffs move all over. Some of them flew toward us. Mama and I went back in the house and watched from a window. The firemen got on the bus and closed the door.
One of the little green puffs landed in the gutter and started eating the trash and dead leaves. Another one got stuck on the pipe at the back of the bus. We watched and watched as the little puffs ate all the trash.
Scientists eventually figured out that the green smoke was an alien that ate trash and dirty air and water. The little puffs ate everything people threw away. They even ate the smoke that came out of cars. They were cleaning up the Earth.