Students form club to help save environment

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Jun 3, 2009 | by Judith Prieve

It's not often students come to a teacher and ask for an extra project, but that's essentially what happened in Kim Dobrzensky's fifth-grade class at Carmen Dragon Elementary. Sparked by an interest in helping the environment, several students approached their teacher and asked if they could form a Save the Planet Earth Club.

Dobrzensky credits Lindsay Horgan and Joelly Machuca for getting the club going. The teacher then opened it up to all the students in her class, and several others joined in.

"The main goal or objective was to make others aware of ways to save the earth," Dobrzensky said. "We started brainstorming, and came up with a skit that we put on for the entire school at a Monday Morning Madness meeting."

The group's next goal was to create a newsletter to encourage others to become environmentally friendly. The 11 students brainstormed ideas for articles and began writing them, giving up four weeks of their lunch time, three days a week to work on the project.

"I did nothing," Dobrzensky said, noting her only help was with the brainstorming and setting up the newsletter template on her laptop.

Horgan served as editor and reviewed the articles before they were added to the newsletter. As part of the project, Nicolas Gutierrez surveyed all 56 third-graders to find out if they recycle paper at school, later creating a graph for the newsletter. The results: two said "never'; 23 said "sometimes"; and 31 said "always."

The group later printed copies of its newsletter and shared it with each class.

"They worked so hard and were so very ambitious," Dobrzensky said.

Here are some excerpts from the club's newsletter:

How to save water

Can you save water? Well, if your saying "no," well, think again. One way you can save water is to turn your water off when brushing your teeth and also turn off the water when washing your hands. These are very simple ways to save water.

The earth has a lot of water but what happens if all of the water is gone? We would die because we need water to survive. The only way we can get water on the earth is by collecting rain water. Collecting rain water is a very good start "...

-- Murcel Rahimi, Lindsay Horgan

How Carmen Dragon students recycle

How do you recycle at home and at school? Well, I asked four fifth-graders how they recycle. Jordyn M. in Miss Wahidi's class said, "Water bottles I use at school I take them home and reuse them."

Tamana in Mrs. Gallegos' class said, "I recycle all the paper I use."

Rabehah in Ms. Havener's class said, "I use both sides of my paper then recycle it."

Justin in Mrs. Dobrzensky's class said, "I recycle by finding all the cans and bottles." "...

-- Shelby Goulart

Earth Day every day

Recycling is really important to the earth because everyone and everything will be safe and healthy. Also, if more people see it, then maybe it'll go on and on. "...

Here are some ways that you can make Earth Day every day:

-- Throw your garbage away in trash cans

-- Always recycle your paper

-- Try to drive less, maybe ride your bike to more place

-- Take shorter showers instead of baths

-- Joelly Machuca, Veronica Jacob and Nicole Gonzalez

Why it's good to recycle

We were doing some research about recycling. Here are some fun facts about recycling:

-- If you recycle 2,000 pounds of paper, it will save 17 trees.

-- Did you know when you recycle you can save energy to make a TV work for three hours, and a 100-watt bulb for four hours?

-- Also, when you recycle, it goes to a recycling factory to be decomposed and be used again.

-- Every time you get a grocery bag from the store it might get thrown in the ocean and could kill 1,000,000 sea creatures each year. So, save a sea creature, and buy a reusable bag.

-- In 1972, together, we recycled 53,000,000 pounds of aluminum cans; today we go beyond that amount weekly"....

-- Jessica Djaja and Aliantha Reynoso

Planet Earth Club

Murcel, Aliantha, Joelly, Shelby, Austin, Nicolas, Veronica, Jessica, Raul, Nicole and I are all in the Save the Earth Club. Our purpose of making the club is to help the environment and make people aware of recycling. We are also trying to take care of our environment.

We thought that even though we're a small club we can still make a difference. We can help make the school a better place. Maybe even the world a better place to live in. So even you can make a small difference in the world or in your environment.

-- Lindsay Horgan