Introduction

Your school is wanting to go "green". The definition of going green is being energy efficient, healthy and using sustainable resources. It also refers to using nature’s processes in order to use less energy, consume less water and produce less waste. The school board would like you to form a team of three people that will investigate different ways for the school to go green and make a recomendation.

First Step

In order to understand why the school wants to make these changes, go to the geocities website then click on “the green house effect”, “air pollution and acid rain”, and “too much trash” buttons to read about the influences on the environment.
Think about what things around your school could use the most improvement. Look for information that would help change these conditions.

Second Step

There are three different options for the school’s going green project. It is your choice to decide what would be the best for the school. Each person should read through the following topics: recycling, green cleaners, and green power.
To find out more about what is possible to recycle visit: thegreenguide.com and think about what things your school could recycle. Cleaners can be very harmful to the environment too. Read about this here.
Find out more about green power at epa.gov.

Develop a Proposal

Once you decide as a group which way you want to go green, start to develop a proposal that you would present to the school board. You will hand in a paper with three components. Each group member should choose one component to complete then all three should be compiled into one proposal. First, develope a plan, create a step by step way of implement the plan, then explain why you chose the plan. The proposal should be about three pages long.

Identify Problem

One group member should identify the most important problem in the school that affects the environment. Explain how this problem affects the environment. In about one page, describe how your proposal will solve or reduce this problem if it were implemented.

The Plan

Develop a plan for making the school greener. In about a page, breifly describe which way your group decided to do this. Then give a step by step implement the plan. Describe what materials you will need, how much it might cost, how long it will take to complete, and how it will affect the students and staff at the school.
The following websites can be helpful to find out some of the above information.
To find out how much solar panels cost, click here.
To find out how what green energy options are availible in your area click here and select your state and county.
Click here to find safe cleaning products.

Explanation

Write about one page explaining why you choose this way of going green. Explain what about it most benefits the school and the environment.

Teacher Help

This WebQuest is targeted for students in 8th or 9th grade. Through it, students will learn about how the environment is affected by humans, they will learn about technology that can help the environment, and they will learn how to use the information they find to change the conditions in their own community. Before beginning, the students should be aware of basic earth science, they should know how to write a one page paper in a formal tone and be able to combine more than one author’s writing into a single paper. The students will need about four 45 minute periods for exploring the websites. Then they will need time to write their collective paper. A good project will clearly have three parts. It will identify the problem, explain the plan, and give an explanation of the group’s decision. The problem should be tightly related to the school and how the school is affecting the environment. The explanation should give clear, logical, and easy to follow instructions that are feasible for the school to implement. The explanation should include information that tightly explains how the plan will help the problem. An okay project will have three parts that are somewhat clear. All the components are there but not fully explained. Work that isn’t good doesn’t have all three components. What components are there are not clearly explained.