How many times did you use paper today? From the morning newspaper, home insulation, and milk cartons to laminated kitchen countertops and space technology--paper is everywhere. In the classroom, paper is essential for communication. You and your students use it in notebooks, journals, drawings, books, magazines, and computer printouts. Every person in the United States uses hundreds of pounds of paper each year. Yet students seldom think about what paper is or where it comes from.

By sixth grade, students have used many kinds of paper. They are ready to explore properties of paper and principles of technological design. How is paper made? Where did it come from? What properties does it have? How can paper have so many uses? How is paper recycled? How can I design a recycled-paper product? The Technology of Paper enables students to explore these questions. By investigating six common types of paper, students develop skills in observing, describing, and testing the properties of paper. They also gain an understanding of the principles of hand papermaking. Finally, the unit provides students with an opportunity to expand their skills and understanding as they apply technological design to create their own recycled greeting card, stationery, or postcard.

Sixth-graders are becoming capable of reading about and articulating complex information. They are also able to develop higher-level scientific reasoning skills, such as identifying cause and effect, designing and conducting controlled tests, and supporting their conclusions with evidence. The activities in this unit, which culminate in an extended opportunity to use a technological design process, challenge and broaden students' skills and abilities in these areas.

Lesson 1 begins with a class brainstorming session. Students share what they know about paper and record their thoughts and questions about it. They collect, observe, and describe the properties of different papers they find in their environment. The lesson suggests methods you can use to introduce students to the basic steps of technological design, which they will explore in greater detail later in the unit. One method is for students to establish a paper-recycling station that will supply them with recovered paper to recycle throughout the unit. Lesson 1 also serves as a pre-unit assessment of students' knowledge of the properties and uses of paper.

In Lesson 2, students begin their investigation of six common types of paper--newspaper, copy paper, magazine paper, notebook paper, toilet tissue, and paper towel--by looking at them through microscopes. By comparing the appearances of the paper samples both wet and dry, students have the opportunity to observe that paper is made of fine, intertwined fibers, and they begin to speculate on the effect water has on these fibers. In addition, through a reading selection, students learn about modern industrial papermaking.

In Lessons 3 through 5, students begin their exploration of the technological design process through paper-property testing. By discussing what is meant by product quality and how competing consumer products are compared, students begin to think about why product testing is important. As they conduct a strength test on the six papers, students are introduced to the idea of a "fair test," or controlled experiment. They build the skill of controlling all variables except the one being tested. Students then continue investigating each paper's properties by determining how smooth and opaque it is and how much liquid it will absorb. Challenged to produce a set of test results that reflect group consensus, students build the process skill of communicating ideas and observations through discussion. The class then creates a Class Paper-Properties Tests--Results Table that will be a key reference tool in later lessons. Finally, students discuss why paper testing is important and write paper performance summaries. These writings provide you with an individual assessment of the students' understanding of paper properties, paper-property testing, and the concept that a paper's properties are directly related to its use. Through a reading selection, students learn about the variety of writing surfaces used throughout history, the invention of paper, and how the use of paper spread throughout the world.

By Lesson 6, students draw on their experiences in the first five lessons to recycle one of the six paper samples and identify the variables that may affect the properties of the paper they make by hand. This discussion lays the groundwork for Lesson 7, where students test the properties of their recycled paper and compare the results with those of tests done on the original paper. Through discussion and analysis of their results, students link the variables of the recycling process to their effects on the properties of the recycled paper. Lesson 8 builds on these experiences by focusing the students on two significant variables of their hand-papermaking process: the amount of fiber used and the way the pulp is prepared. At this point in the unit, students reflect on their experiences by completing a student self-assessment.

In Lesson 9, students use the other five papers to investigate how the type of fiber affects both the recycling process and the properties of the paper that is produced. In addition, students compare the hand- and machine-papermaking processes. This sets the stage for Lesson 10, in which students apply their knowledge and skills by experimenting with the class paper-recycling process. This also provides you with an assessment opportunity. In addition, through a reading selection about one process used for recycling newspaper, students learn about a crucial step in paper recycling: deinking (pronounced dee-inking). Interested students can discover firsthand that washing and deinking the pulp can improve the whiteness of the recycled paper and, therefore, broaden its possible uses.

In Lessons 11 to 13, students explore a new variable that affects the properties and therefore the use of paper--additives. By investigating the effect of adding a filler, dye, and sizing to the paper pulp, students further apply their knowledge of the properties of paper and increase their awareness of techniques used to enhance paper's versatility. In Lesson 13, students follow their own plan for recycling with additives, which serves as an embedded assessment.

Exploring paper variations in Lesson 14 enables students to broaden the range of ways they can design paper and vary its properties. Through embossing their recycled paper, embedding objects in it, and evaluating whether their design turned out as planned, students continue to develop their skills in product evaluation.

Lessons 15 to 17 serve as an embedded assessment that gives students the opportunity to apply their knowledge of paper, its properties, and the hand-papermaking recycling process to design and make a paper product. Students are given a challenge: As part of the design team for a paper company that makes recycled paper products, they are to develop one of three new company products--stationery, a greeting card, and postcard. Students work through four steps of a technological design process: Identifying Needs and Opportunities, Generating a Design, Planning and Making the Design, and Testing, Evaluating, and Communicating the Design. They begin by evaluating samples of existing cards, stationery, and postcards to determine what characteristics make them effective or successful. They then establish requirements for the design specifications they will use to develop their paper product. Next, students make their product and evaluate the effectiveness of their design plan. Finally, students establish ways to measure the quality of their products. Using these data, they evaluate their paper product and develop proposals for modifications.

Following Lesson 17 is a post-unit assessment that is matched to the pre-unit assessment in Lesson 1. Additional assessments provide further questions and challenges for evaluating student progress.

This is a challenging unit for students. Through firsthand observation and research, they develop an understanding of and appreciation for the importance of controlled testing and the process of hand papermaking. By experiencing the four basic steps of the technological design process, students begin to appreciate how scientists use technology to solve practical problems. These experiences provide the opportunity for students to discover that paper is an important renewable resource that continues to play a critical role in our civilization.