As a teacher, you will assist students moving through the learning modules.  Students will be able move through the learning module at their own pace but it is critical that you, as the teacher, make sure students are not falling behind because they are struggling with the content.  As the learning module progresses, the information gets increasingly difficult.  At the end of the learning module students will be able to:

• understand plastics and the history of plastic use
• describe how plastics end up in the oceans
• discuss the ways plastics affect the ocean and its ecosystems
• theoretically develop a way to help the ocean plastic problem

While many students will be able to complete the beginning modules with little struggle, the last two modules that pertain to the project and real world scenario can become difficult for students as it is theoretical in nature with no right or wrong answers.  As a teacher, it is important to recognize that this can be overwhelming but guide the students through each of the updates to ensure and support them throughout the project for the students to be successful.  The students have to use critical thinking and creativity to engineer a theoretical idea to benefit the ocean and thus society.  This large-scale idea about the real world tends to be overwhelming for students.  

Including the completion of the project it is anticipated that the learning module will be completed within 3 weeks.  However this can be tailored if you have a high-achieveing honors class (shorten to 2 weeks) or a lower-level standard class (extended to 4-5 weeks).

This update is to introduce the module and the expectations of the students, as well as collect pre-knowledge from the students on plastics and the ocean.  This survey is important as it gives the teacher an idea of where the students are individually with their knowledge, as well as asks what the students may want to know more of in terms of plastics.  

The teacher should look at these results immediately to determine if any of the updates need to be altered or changed in any way to increase or decrease the rigor.  In most cases the survey will help you understand the students previous knowledge, but there will not be a need for any type of major edits.  However, teachers need to be willing to tweak or alter any update if they feel it could be improved for their students.  

This second update is pretty standard in terms of knowledge.  It is important that students have a some knowledge about the history of plastics to get the full picture of how we, as humans, have created the problem with plastics.  The main points are:

• plastics were developed for WWII
• after war ended, companies needed another way to earn profits
• convenience and ease are what drives plastic use
• the problem of plastics in terms of garbage has been known since the early 2000s.

Students typically understand this update but also discover something that they didn't know about plastics.

The use of the national geographic video and the infographic allow students two types of media to help understand the history of plastics.  By using these tools they will be able to understand the basics of plastics and how we have arrived at our current problem.

Ideally this update allows students to begin thinking about the plastic pollution problem and to begin using our history and learning from our past mistakes.  This is a good skill for students to learn and take to other classes.

This update allows the students the choice of exploring of the ways plastics get into our oceans. It also allows them to explore the topic more in-depth and to find their own information and sources.  They are the information producers with their updates and can interact with their peers with commenting on each others updates.  

This update usually goes well as long as the students stay on task.  The repeated problem with this assignment is usually the citation and referencing.  Students tend to copy-and-paste as well as not understand APA formating and therefore struggle with citations.  Making sure they have reference to PurdueOwl as well as referring them to the citation method they have used in their english class (as well as other classes) may help.  

Students typically enjoy learning about this because it becomes relevant to them and their future.  It's important for the teacher to interact with the students in the comments to continue the conversation to help them understand some of the problems that different ecosystems are having because of plastics. 

You can also use the questions that are posted in the comments to build discussion in class.  Have the students break into groups and present them with one question for them to work on together as a collaboration project.  This can be a face-to-face activity if your class is hybrid but can also work as a group project if the class is online only.   

This project will allow you, as the teacher, to see the knowledge that your students have now gained about plastics and our oceans.  By allowing students to give feedback, receive feedback and revise before submitting for a grade you have allowed them to improve prior to it being "counted".  

If this is the first time students have completed peer reviews you may see them struggling with their comments.  Typically students struggle with peer-review, specifically cirtical feedback.  They do not want to appear as if they are "mean" and therefore are too nice, not holding the student work to the expectations.  They also seem to struggle with critical feedback if it is in a nagative connotation.  It may be necessary to complete a practice peer-review prior to this project, or complete the first one of their peer-reviews in class to go over it with the students.

This is definitely the fun update where the students get to be creative and come up with their own ideas.  This allows them to take the knowledge that they have learned and apply it to a read world problem.  This allows them to be critical thinkers and to problem-solve.

This is an open-ended question or comment that allows students to just relax and be creative.  No grade is assigned so this should allow students to relax and be as creative as they would like to without fear of "being wrong".  Without the pressure of a grade, ideadlly students are able to be risk-takers.

By allowing students to complete this assignment at the end you are allowing student to come up with solutions to a real world problem.  Some may be very simple but some may surprise you!

One of the things that a teacher may run into with this update is the students worry about "right or wrong".  Students seem to only want the correct answer and they do not want to put down the wrong one.  When completing this update it is important that the teacher interact with the students within the comments to reassure them that there is no grade assigned to their idea and that as long as they provide evidence of critical thinking and problem solving, that they will earn a pass for this assignment and thus complete this module.