3 Inspiring Youths To Teach Your Students About This Earth Day

April 20, 2021

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Earth day is coming up! It’s that time of the year where we truly get to dedicate the time in our crazy busy curriculum to talk about the Earth.

As educators, we want our students to know that they can make a difference now. We want to see our students take action and the initiative to help save planet earth. So what’s a better way to inspire our students to make a change than to introduce them to other kids that HAVE made a change.

Even though these individuals are no longer kids, they started taking action and using their voices when they were young. It just goes to show that when you are passionate about something, you don’t just stop after one action or an idea, you keep working on it!

In this blog, I will talk about 3 youths that you should teach your students about this Earth Day, along with some recommended resources that you can use.

I love using the book “Young, Fearless, and Awesome: 25 Young People Who Changed The World” by Stella Caldwell as a read-aloud and different DOGO News articles to dive deeper into who they are and what they did. If you do not have a Newsela subscription, DOGO News is an amazing website to get current news articles written for kids. They even have questions, vocabulary words, and a video to go along with every article! YouTube videos are also great to mix it up as well.

Book-Head-Heart is a great way to get your students to respond to the read-aloud, along with writing reflections to get the kids to reflect on the information they just consumed. You can also use different visible thinking strategies such as Headlines, I used to think…now I think, Connect-Extend-Challenge, and Color-Symbol-Image to get your students to think deeper and organize the information.

Let’s talk about these inspiring youths that are helping our world right now!

#1: Greta Thunberg & Climate Change

3 Inspiring Youths To Teach Your Students About This Earth Day: Greta Thunberg — Greta Thunberg

Greta Thunberg has been making headlines after headlines since 2018. She is most famous for organizing the “School Strike for Climate,” to raise awareness and getting world leaders to take actions against Climate Change. Greta is inspiring because she’s not scared to use her voice one bit! The kids can learn so much from her, especially how far and loud a voice of a passionate individual can be heard.

Resources to introduce Greta:

READ

WATCH

Questions for Discussions

Do you agree with “School Strike for Climate?”
How has learning about Greta Thunberg make you think or feel?
Greta is not afraid to use her voice to speak up about Climate Change. How can you use your voice? What would you use your voice for?

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#2: Felix Finkbeiner & Restoring the Rainforest

3 Inspiring Youths To Teach Your Students About This Earth Day: Felix Finkbeiner — Felix Finkbeiner

In fourth grade, Felix learned about global warming in school. During his research for a class presentation, he learned about Wangari Maathai and came up with the idea to plant one million trees in each country around the world. He is the founder of Plant-for-the-Planet and has successfully planted over a million trees after only 3 years! Plant-for-the-Planet is still working on planting trees around the world today! This just goes to show that a class project is not limited to just the classroom!

Resources to introduce Felix:

READ

WATCH

Questions for Discussions

Felix was inspired by Wangari Maathai. Who inspires you and why?
Felix got the help of his classmates and teacher to start his Plant-for-the-Planet. What are some things that you can your classmates could do together to help save the Earth?
What did you learn from Felix’s actions? How can you apply that to yourself?

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#3: Boyan Slat & The Ocean Cleanup

3 Inspiring Youths To Teach Your Students About This Earth Day: Boyan Slat — Boyan Slat

Boyan Slat started becoming interested in cleaning up the ocean after his diving experience in Greece at 16, where he saw so many plastic materials under the ocean. He used his knowledge of the ocean and came up with a brilliant concept on how the ocean could be clean at a low cost and fast! After presenting the idea, he was able to actually create his prototype and started The Ocean Cleanup. The cleanup system was launched on September 8, 2018, and it’s still going on today! If you are a science teacher, Boyan Slat’s journey to creating the Ocean Cleanup System is a great way to show the Engineering Design Process.

Resources to introduce Felix:

READ

WATCH

Questions for Discussions

What do you think about Boyan’s journey to make his idea come to life?
Boyan saw a problem when he went diving which drove him to create a cleanup system for the ocean. Have you witness something in the environment that was a problem? How could you help fix that problem?
Boyan used his knowledge about the ocean to design a cleanup system for the ocean. What are some design ideas that you have that could help the environment?

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These 3 inspiring youths have helped change the world and hopefully they will inspire your students to do the same.

I hope this has been helpful to you. Leave a comment below to let me know what you are doing this Earth day!

Prima from LittleYellowStar