Sustainable Polymers: Taking Action to Solve the Challenge of Plastics, Grades 6-8

This is a 4-H STEM Curriculum for Grades 6-8 (11 to 14 year olds).  This is a youth-driven curriculum focusing on the use and impacts of plastics and sustainability.  The curriculum is designed to build foundational skills of science and engineering: observations, asking questions and defining problems, planning and carrying out investigations, and communicating.  The curriculum contains three learning phases/modules intended for delivery in out-of-school time facilitated by an educator (trained volunteers or program staff).  In each phase, youth will explore polymer science content through a guided activity and then become change agents through youth-driven projects.

This curriculum was developed by a partnership between the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers, University of Minnesota Extension, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Cornell University Cooperative Extension, and SciGirls.  This work is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the NSF Center for Sustainable Polymers CHE-1901635.