Whether you're teaching human impact on the environment, ecosystems, Earth's systems, climate change, or even chemistry, it's easy (and important) to add an air pollution activity to your curriculum. Air pollution has natural ties to so many aspects of science, health, and even social issues. Students should understand how air pollution affects them and their local and global communities in a multitude of ways. Over the years, I developed tried-and-true ways to teach air pollution in my science class.

As I was developing my land pollution lesson plan, I couldn't help but take a little trip down memory lane to the 1980s... I remember a lot of ads about not being a “litterbug”.  My generation got the message… littering is bad. While being a “litterbug” seems to have been cut down, garbage is still a huge issue on our little third rock from the sun. The amount of garbage humans generate is really out of control, and we are running out of ways to deal with it.

Kids can agree that dirty water is gross and littered water is not a rare sight. But there are many aspects to water pollution that go overlooked. Water pollution is not just about yucky, ugly water. It's about contaminated drinking water and microplastics exposing us to harmful chemicals. It's about thermal pollution from power plants and nutrient pollution from agriculture. If we're going to raise environmentally aware kids, water pollution lessons will require more than the "dirty water = bad, clean water = good" simplified approach.