
				Pat Quinn, Governor

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Environmental Progress - Winter 1999

Education Program Focus Is Clean Air

Now available for fifth and sixth grades, the program is in its 12th year.

The importance of clean air will be the focus of the 12th education program of the Illinois EPA, recently distributed to fifth and sixth grade teachers around the state. The Air, Land & Water education program provides an intensive short curriculum for classroom study and the opportunity for students to submit written works or illustrations of the subject matter for judging and awards. In a three year cycle, emphasis rotates between air, land or water. This year's subject will be "The Air We Breathe."

This year, 556 teachers with total classroom enrollments of 88,148 students requested the study materials.

For the 1998-99 program, packets were mailed to participating teachers in early December. Teachers incorporated the materials into their classroom curricula during January, and between Feb. 1 and Feb. 9 posters and written compositions were displayed at their schools.

Each school may send two posters and two poems or essays to the Illinois EPA by Feb. 10 for judging by Agency staff on Feb. 22, when 50 finalists will be selected. On Feb. 23 an outside panel of judges will select six top entries from among the finalists.

Students who created the works selected as finalists, with their families and teachers, will be invited to a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. on March 20 in the corridor gallery at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. The posters and written works will remain on display at the museum until April 30. Information about the winners, with their photos and pictures of their winning entries, also will be posted on the Illinois EPA's homepage.

At the reception, the students who submitted the top six entries will each receive a $50 U.S. savings bond and a specially inscribed environmental book for their school's library. All finalists receive ribbons.