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The kids involved in our classes at the zoo want to build barn owl boxes to help their populations! By providing barn owls a place to live, we can better understand where they are located so we can map it and provide this information to other locals including scientists!

Our project would reduce people in our school's use of plastic products such as plastic water bottle, zip lock bags, plastic silverware, plastic cups and so on. We will achieve these through doing video presentations about plastic pollution, giving incentives for students to not use or buy single-use plastic products and for restaurants/stores/etc. to not provide so many single-use plastic products (e.g. Starbucks).

Each child will create a "Starfish-Respect for All Living Things" scrapbook that will feature their responses to all activities with photos, articles, essays, reflections, book reviews and much more. They will invite the public to respond to their blog posts, videos, psa's and hopefully, receive responses to their letter writing campaigns and petitions. And we hope to raise a lot of $$$ with our musical fundraiser, palm oil free bake sale and sale of class magazine. They will continually self assess their learning with frequent personal reflections, partner activities and Socratic Seminar style class discussions that will take place throughout the process.

Through the use of a children's book we will illustrate how these plastics upset the oceans ecosystems and cause harm to all whom inhabit the ocean.

The success of the campaign comes from the student's enthusiasm when they can see their plants growing regularly. For most kids, this will be their first plant they have ever grown. After their plants have matured outside, they will then have the option of taking the plant home to share with the family and to plant it at their home. This will then make room in the raised bed for another round of planting. Students will collect the following data on a weekly basis: plant height, plant width, amount of leaf, temperature outdoor, amount of days. They will also be graphing out their data. Students will be planting twice per season (8 times in a school year) so that they can see the effect of season change on a plant. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since I am the co-adviser of the Garden Club (GoGreen) at my school, I have access to the garden area. As I teach Biology to my students, we will regularly plant different kinds of plants and have my class take them to the garden area for planting. Since I have built the initial raised bed (4 feet tall, 8 feet long, and 4 feet wide), we can use that to have my class plant their plants. The Garden Club members and officers comes by in the afternoon to water all plants so that they are taken care of. Afterwards, I will bring my class back to the garden area regularly to check up on the plants and give outdoor lecture around their plants.

The problem our campaign will address is the lack of recycling at our school. So much paper, bottles and cans are being thrown away and taken to landfills. There is an easy solution to set up this recycling program so that the recyclables will end up at a Material Recovery Facility to be recreated into something else instead of sitting in a landfill forever. Through this project, the students have learned about why it is important that we all reduce, reuse and recycle individually and as a community. The students are seeing first hand how not doing these three things will affect our world in the future. My students will educate the rest of the school on recycling and not littering on our campus. I also plan on taking my students to a recycling center nearby so they can see how the recyclables are sorted and hear about the statistics of the amount of trash and recyclables are thrown in landfills each day.

The middle school chapter of the Grand Island Roots and Shoots (along with some family members) will volunteer during the Stolley Park Planting Days on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016 (for starters). We will help plant perennial flowers in the garden beds at Stolley Park from 9-11. This is the second year the Parks division has sponsored volunteer planting days. The Parks division has begun to plant more perennials at city parks and facilities as they are more cost-effective than annuals due to the lower maintenance associated with them. Native plants are also in the plans, for that same reason. OUR hope is that those plants will help attract the monarchs that migrate through here by becoming a stopover site again.

Project will be rolled out staring in late October and our efforts will continue through the fall culminating in two community wide activities-a program at the High School and a Community Wide Program for the County in November.

We will create Welcome Home new pet bags with a Pet Safety book and items like poop bags and treats to help new pet owners understand what they need to do to care for their new pets!

We will work all year round to build Healing Gardens for children with special needs and chronic illnesses