"Plastic Wars" (PBS FRONTLINE) Movie Viewing Guide

This product is a viewing guide to the PBS FRONTLINE documentary movie “Plastic Wars” about the history of plastics and plastic recycling, available to stream for FREE on PBS's website and YouTube. (Note: this refers to the 54-minute documentary film from Frontline: Season 38, Episode 15) The viewing guide is 30 questions: 3 questions before the movie, 25 questions during the film, and 2 reflection questions after the movie. Some questions are fill in the blank and some are short short answer questions, varying from asking students to identify significant pieces of information from the documentary, reason cause and effect, explore relationships between concepts elaborated in the film, or summarize information in their own words. Use this worksheet in your earth science, environmental science, or social studies/global issues class to keep students engaged and paying attention throughout the movie. This movie is great to use in a unit about solid waste and recycling, or in the broader categories of pollution or controversial science and critical media analysis. The film is appropriate for students ranging from middle school to high school age. This document can be printed and used for in-person class or distributed digitally for online learning, in a synchronous or asynchronous lesson. An answer key is provided for teacher use. 

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