Students Inform Community About Green Practices

Ten-year-old Haley Asuma said she goes shopping with her mother five times a month and each time, she receives a new grocery bag.

But Asuma found herself thinking differently about bags after learning that it takes one 15 to 20-year-old tree to make only 30 grocery paper bags.

"I thought it was kind of sad," Asuma said.

So, Asuma and her 75 classmates at the Oakwood Elementary School are making posters with tips for the grown ups on how to help the environment. Asuma drew a man cutting down a large tree, along with the fact that she learned and her solution - people should bring their own bags.

On March 10, the fourth-grade students developed the idea of making movie posters to help the community reduce waste and save energy, said Susan Meunier, a fourth-grade teacher. Each child made a poster highlighting an environmental problem and a suggested solution.

Once the posters are complete, they will ask locally businesses to put them up, Meunier said. The fifth-grade class will also read some of the environmental tips and upload the information to the school's Web site.

The children learned about environmental issues through reading books and visiting Web sites, Meunier said. Then, they had to come up with their own solutions to those environmental problems.

March 23, 2008