Emily Divan Student Work Samples

Sample 1

The following are samples of student work at the beginning and end of my unit. On the first day of the unit, I
had students complete Post-It notes on what they knew and wanted to know about what happens to garbage
after we put it in the garbage can. Some students, such as Karen, knew a significant amount Garbage goes to
a landfill. A landfill is a big hole. After a landfil is full of garbage it is covered in dirt others, such as Luke,
knew less My trash goes to the dump area on the way to my moms work. As we learned about landfills and
how they work, students learned various new aspects of where the garbage goes that they had not known before.
For example, Karen wrote on April 14, 2014, a landfill has a tank that cleans water. Around the time my unit
ended on April 21, 2014, Samantha, who had initially written You have to put the garbig in a garbag bag,
wrote it taks one milon years to disper (It takes one million years to disappear). What Samantha learned is
that some garbage, such as aluminum cans, takes a million years to decompose in a landfill. Finally, when I
asked students to tell me what they had learned as a result of our discussions on landfills and garbage, Luke
wrote, Garbage goes in the landfill and there turned into playgrounds. Luke had gone from knowing about
a dump on the way to work to what happens to landfills when they are full of waste.
On the right is Karens
answer to Where does the
garbage go? garbage goes
to a landfill. A landfill is a
big hole. After the landfill
is full of garbage it is
covered in dirt.

The left is Karens response
to What have you
learned? That a landfill
has a tank that cleans water.
On the left is Samanthas
response to Where does the
garbage go? You have to put
the garbage in a garbage bag, and
recycling goes in the recycling.

On the right is what Samantha
learned as a result of the unit
[Some garbage] takes one million
years to disappear.
Emily Divan Student Work Samples
















Luke, our student with Autism, provided the following
responses to Where does the garbage go and What
have you learned?

Right: Luke responded to Where does the garbage go
with My trash goes to the dump area on the way to my
moms work

Below: Luke demonstrates his learning by telling me that
he now knows that the dump is called a landfill (Garbage
goes to the landfill) and what happens to landfills when
they are full (Theyre turned into playgrounds).