1. Activate students’ prior knowledge by posing a deceptively simple question: What is plastic, and where does it come from?

• Instruct publishing teams to work together to brainstorm a list of everyday items made of plastics. Have teams share their lists with the whole class, highlighting points of agreement, disagreement, and uncertainty.

• Once the class list is complete, instruct teams to write their own definition of plastics. Emphasize that this definition can and should change as they learn new information.

• After teams share their definitions, ask a final question to activate students’ prior knowledge about the topic of the video they will watch in Step two: Where do all the plastics come from? (Student answers will vary; take care not to correct inaccurate responses, as the upcoming video will provide information.)

2. Deepen students’ understanding of plastics with an explanatory video.

• Prepare students to watch the video Science 101: Plastics (5:45) by introducing key vocabulary they will hear in the video. Briefly introduce the following words and add them to the word wall. 

• synthetic

• polymer

• fossil fuel

• extraction

• detrimental

• biodegradable

• sustainable

• Show the video and address any questions raised by students.

• Prompt teams to update their definitions of plastics and then share their new definitions with the class.

3. Conduct a plastics audit in the classroom in order to understand the extent to which the modern world relies on plastics.

• Distribute the Classroom Plastics Audit handout. Make sure each team selects a certain area of the classroom in which to search for plastics, as described on the handout.

• Caution students that they may not always be able to tell if a material is a type of plastic or not. Plastics can often look and feel similar to rubber, fabric, foam, glass, wood, or metal. Some materials (including treated paper products) that don’t look or feel like plastic may have a plastic coating or lining. Students can share their uncertainties with the class and discuss whether they think questionable materials should be classified as plastics or not.

• Explain the difference between single-use and durable plastics: single-use, or disposable, plastics are designed to be used once and then thrown in the trash, whereas durable plastics are designed to be used many times.

• After students have completed a comprehensive list of the plastics in their designated area, ask:

• Did the amount of plastics in our classroom surprise you?

• Were there any materials that sparked debate in your team about whether they were made of plastic or not?

• What do you think will happen to all of this plastic? Where will it be 10 years from now, or 100 years from now?

• If you collected all of your plastic trash for a day, how much space would it take up? What if you did this for a week, a month, or a year?

• In conclusion, remind students that their magazine will contain an explanation of what plastics are, how they are made, and how they are used.

4. Facilitate a jigsaw reading activity about sources and impacts of ocean plastic.

• Divide the class into new jigsaw groups. Jigsaw groups should contain four students, each from a different publishing team.

• Prior to assigning these jigsaw groups, familiarize yourself with the four resources and their reading guides. The four resources are not all equal in terms of their reading levels and visual complexity:

• Resource A: What Happens to the Plastic We Throw Out
• Resource B: 10 Shocking Facts About Plastic Pollution
• Resource C: Ocean Trash: 5.25 Trillion Pieces and Counting
• Resource D: Sailing Seas of Plastic

• To each of these new jigsaw groups, assign one of the four resources. (If you have more than four groups, two jigsaw groups may be assigned the same resource.) 

• Tell each group that their job is to become experts on this particular resource.

• Caution groups that these resources are not all typical articles; for instance, Resources A and D contain several interactive maps, and Resource B is mostly made up of photographs and numbers. Resource C is available in multiple reading levels from third to 12th. Later, when they return to their publishing teams, they will be responsible for sharing new information from their jigsaw resource to incorporate into their publishing team’s updated Ocean Plastics Movement Model, which they began in the previous activity, Autopsy of an Albatross.

• Distribute appropriate Reading Guides to each jigsaw group:

• Reading Guide A:What Happens to the Plastic We Throw Out
• Reading Guide B:10 Shocking Facts About Plastic Pollution
• Reading Guide C:Ocean Trash: 5.25 Trillion Pieces and Counting
• Reading Guide D:Sailing Seas of Plastic
• Ensure each group has online access, then instruct students to begin reading and answering the questions.

• Prior to the conclusion of the jigsaw activity, remind students that they are responsible for sharing information about their jigsaw resource with their publishing team. This information should help their publishing team refine their Ocean Plastics Movement Model.

• If some groups finish their Reading Guides before others, those groups can begin updating their Ocean Plastics Movement Model with the new information they have learned.

• When the Reading Guides are complete, use the Reading Guides Answer Key to assess students’ understanding. 

• After assessment, Reading Guides should be placed in each publishing team’s folder, where they can be consulted when publishing teams are working on other elements of their magazines.

5. Guide students to update their Ocean Plastics Movement Models.

• Bring students back into their publishing teams. Instruct them to take out their Ocean Plastics Movement Models. Remind students that the final version of this model will be a central part of their unit project, but it is still under development. They have now learned a lot of new information, from many different resources, which they can use to update their models.

• Instruct students to take turns in their publishing teams sharing information from their jigsaw resources that will improve their Ocean Plastics Movement Models. While one student is sharing information about their jigsaw resource, another student in their publishing team should add drawings to the model, while a third student writes a verbal explanation.

• Because they will continue to revise their Ocean Plastics Movement Models over the course of this unit, remind students to use pencils. In addition, having different colored pencils for successive layers of revisions and additions may prove helpful.