• Students will organize and clarify their thinking by using Thinking Maps, visual tools for learning.
• Students set classroom goals and take actions to achieve the challenge set by the class.
• Students will follow the research process: Read a paragraph. Close the book or the website. Write what you learned on the Thinking Map best suited for the activity.
• Students will construct and interpret spreadsheets and graphs and be able to make inferences that are based on the analysis of the data collected.
• Students will protect the quality of our water resources in their home state and around the world.
• Students will think critically about recycling and environmental issues.

What’s inside?
As a class, students brainstorm on a Circle Map what they think would be inside a cell phone. Accept all answers and possibilities. Visit How Stuff Works.com to read and view pictures of the inner workings of a typical cell phone. Require the students to develop a Brace Map listing all parts as well as drawing the inside of the cell phone and labeling all parts. A few creative students will find a damaged cell phone to bring to school to show off the inside of a cell phone. The Brace Map and drawing of the cell phone parts can be the beginning of a colorful display in your classroom or in the hallway.

How is cell phone like a radio? A Bridge Map allows the children to view the relationship between a radio and a cell phone. Visit How stuff works.com to gather research and complete the Bridge Map.

What happens to those recycled phones? CollectiveGood.com reprograms and refurbishes our phones for us. The sequence of pictures enables the children to understand the steps of the process of what happens when the unwanted cell phones reach CollectiveGood’s Recycling Center. Children synthesize information from the artist’s pictures and determine what steps might be missing. The children design a Flow Map depicting the steps of the recycling process.

Arrange a field trip to the Water Treatment District in your town. During the field trip, staff members may demonstrate the parts of the treatment process and children will conduct experiments to test the drinking water’s safety. Another fascinating activity is to investigate the interactive H2O University for Kids. Children will understand how important it is to protect the ground water from the toxic elements embedded inside the cell phones. According to the Las Vegas Water District, water conservationists are committed to educating the children of today who will be the future leaders making the decisions about our precious water resources.

Don’t be Trashy! Children investigate the difference between recycling, reducing, and reusing. Explore the concepts of biodegradable and decomposition. Obtain some photos of your town’s landfill and discuss the idea that U.S. citizens are quick to throw away items in the trash. Encourage children to bring in boxes of how items were packed directly from the manufacturer. Was there waste? It might be a bit smelly, but sorting the trash of your classroom under the headings of reduce, reuse, and recycle could help change habits at a young age. In Clark County, home of the Las Vegas metropolitan area, 85% of the garbage produced is sent to landfills for disposal. As of 2002, only 15% of our waste is recycled or reused. Have your students design a poster that would teach others to recycle or reuse. Ask your colleagues if your students could teach another class about what they have learned while designing their poster. Students learn quickly when they teach others what they have learned.

It’s the battery that’s toxic. Begin research on which elements are toxic inside a cell phone with a CollectiveGood article on Environmental Responsibility that can be found at http://collectivegood.com/environmental.asp. By developing the categories for their Tree Map, students chart the course for what they need to know to answer their own questions. What other electronic equipment should be recycled?