Every year, in April, our class does a special school clean-up for four days. One partner picks up the garbage and the other partner writes down what type of garbage it is, on a data collection sheet. Each student gets 2 turns to pick up garbage and 2 turns to record data. We clean all around the schoolyards and in the park playground. The students count up their data and we add all of the totals in an Excel spreadsheet. Then the students make large posters of the kinds of garbage (food-related, drink-related, cigarette butts, school stuff, and kid stuff) and the totals for each one. We do a big presentation at a school assembly, to let everyone know whether we "did better" or "worse" than the year before. This year we counted 2237 pieces of garbage, which was less than last year (2501). We did better! But there is still LOTS of room for improvement! At the same assembly, we announce our "SEEDS Green Schools" class participants. Those classes get a turn with the trophies (Green School and Earth School trophies), a class certificate, and small participation certificates for each student in that class.
