The Story Behind the Water Conservation Campaign

The students were assigned a year-long theme of “Ecology.” One sub-topic of the theme was “Water.” Coincidentally, the teacher heard a newscast of a potential drought in New York City due to a shortage of rain. After sharing this news with the class, the students and the teacher decided to develop a school-wide campaign to educate the school community about water conservation.

The students worked together to develop a list of potential resources for the topic. Then, after gathering information from various sources, the students worked in self-selected groups on various elements of the campaign.

The students wrote a letter to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) requesting information on the topic. The DEP sent pamphlets, a video (“Drip Patrol”), badges, and identification cards. In addition, the teacher invited someone from the DEP to speak to the group. The students also went on a field trip to the Central Park Reservoir where they were given a guided tour by a DEP conservationist.

Over a period of several months, the students displayed posters and banners around the school, distributed a newsletter, and composed and sang jingles. The students used an environmental newsletter and well-known jingles as models to help them create quality products. During this period, students kept logs noting the progress of work for each group.

In order to determine the success of the campaign, the students developed a survey to access prior knowledge of water conservation and a post-campaign survey. The results were compared to determine whether the educational campaign was a success. Based on these results, the students determined that the campaign had been successful.

The written work produced as part of Applied Learning projects commonly contains some errors. Documentation of these projects includes notes, journal entries and plans that students produced as working documents for their personal use. These kinds of documents were not prepared with the expectation of eventual publication and they have not been revised for inclusion in this book.

It is expected that finished work produced as part of an Applied Learning project will contain virtually error free writing.

This project illustrates a standard-setting performance for the following part of the standards:
c	Communication: Publish information.

What the work shows
c Communication Tools and Techniques: The student writes and formats information for short publications, such as brochures or posters; that is, the student:

These are two of the posters that the students prepared to raise awareness of individual responsibility for conserving water. The posters were placed in the bathrooms, the kitchens, and other areas with sinks around the school. The posters present the information the students gathered through their research in a sensational way consistent with informational posters intent on making people aware of some phenomenon. This information is organized into a format suitable for this type of publication. This poster is designed to be an effective method of communication with the entire student population of the school at the point of most impact—faucets. This poster makes use of a rhyme common among cheerleader jingles to get the reader’s attention and stay in the reader’s memory afterwards. The information is clear and to the point and the font is easy to read, both of which help achieve the purpose—audience education.

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