This video highlights the benefits of green burials.
Students learn the impact traditional burials have on the environment, what green burials are and why they are an eco-friendly alternative.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Accompanying text emphasizes important facts from the video.
It explains the chemicals used in most burials today and their negative effects.
It emphasizes the negative effects cremation has on the environment.
Additional Prerequisites
There may be an ad before the video.
You may need to be aware of students who have lost a loved one recently.
Differentiation
Teachers could play from the beginning- 0:45 to highlight the impact of traditional burials and cremation.
Teachers could use part 1:10-1:40 to explain traditional burials and the history of embalming to 6-8th graders.
English or art students could watch this video when discussing the theme of death in literature or art.
Teachers could play from 2:18-2:40 to explain the positive effects of green burials on the people and environment.
Click here for a video on an eco-friendly alternative to traditional coffins.
Scientist Notes
The resource presents the concept of green burial, an eco-friendly and innovative way of burial. This practice can help reduce soil contamination and groundwater pollution. Although sufficient research is needed to theorize this concept, this resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.6.2 Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.7.3 Delineate a speaker's argument and specific claims, evaluating the soundness of the reasoning and the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
