Upper School Bottle Cap Challenge Yields 12,000 Caps
Do you ever wonder what happens to the trash that gets in our waterways? Or where the missing bottle cap you can never seem to find goes?
Norfolk Collegiate’s Marine Biology students can tell you just where items like that go, thanks to a year-long, cross-disciplinary project led by their Teacher Dr. Frank Thomson.
The journey began this fall when Thomson took the students on a field trip to the “Washed Ashore” exhibit at the Norfolk Botanical Garden. The exhibit featured 11 larger-than-life sculptures made from plastics pulled from our oceans. It also was the perfect opportunity for students to learn about ocean wildlife. Students worked in pairs and each pair presented an organism to the class using the exhibit’s sculptures as examples. They discussed the adaptations, habitat, behavior, ecology and other aspects of marine biology of the organism.
Ms. Porterfield, biology teacher, provided context from her experience with marine pollution and plastics in the sea.
After the Field Trip
Students researched their own organisms and used what they learned about its structure, adaptations and other characteristics to construct an artifact—either a 3D sculpture using debris collected from beach cleanups or a 2D collage from recycled plastic bottle caps.
Students researched their own organisms and used what they learned about its structure, adaptations and other characteristics to construct an artifact—either a 3D sculpture using debris collected from beach cleanups or a 2D collage from recycled plastic bottle caps.
“In conjunction with the Green Team, we held three beach cleanups in the fall where we connected our class and field experiences to service learning,” said Dr. Thomson. “Also partnering with the Green Team, we involved the community at-large by sponsoring an upper school advisory bottle cap challenge.”
The Green Team is a student-led upper school club that focuses on the environment and projects related to it. Students challenged their classmates, faculty, staff and families to recycle bottle caps from sodas bottles, water bottles, sports drinks and more to support their project and raise awareness for recycling throughout the year.
Come May, “the community had collected over 12,000 bottle caps for us to use in our collage project,” said
Dr. Thomson. “After sorting the bottle caps, each student created a collage of a marine organism of their
choosing and prepared a presentation highlighting important aspects of the life history of their organism.”
For more information about the class or its projects, please contact Dr. Frank Thomson at fthomson@norfolkcollegiate.org.
