Written by Danijela Maurac
Offering the nine years old student the opportunity to draw conclusions based on experience, learning in immediate reality by researching and studying natural phenomena around him is the most effective way to become aware of the connection between learning, his existing knowledge and experience. If we add to this the innate curiosity of every child, we can do a lot to develop the student's awareness of the role of the individual in the world and to make him a responsible citizen of the future. With our project, we have connected water conservation and forests as two important ecosystems and it was very easily fit into the curriculum. Sustainable development, living conditions and natural balance are topics that can be implemented at all levels and through all subjects. Reading, writing, arithmetic research, experimentation, drawing ... these are all methods used in the activities.The students first got acquainted with the basic living conditions and recognized water as one of them. They explored the importance of water for the life of all living beings and its role as a renewable energy source. They realized the importance of conserving water as a basic ecosystem.They made experiments about natural phenomena and water circulation in nature. Students conducted research on household water consumption and found ways to reduce consumption.
Students were given research assignments at home (flipped clasroom)). Next day, students presented their results to the other students and then used the MetaChart app to create water consumption diagrams.
What is pollution? How people pollute the water? What is the importance of forests and why people destroy them? What impacts have pollution on human being on the Earth?… was the questionst in storm ideas. Students played a Coral bleaching game of marine pollution at Nasa for Kids web page. After that, they made posters with messages on how to reduce water consumption for other students and placed them in school toilets.
https://climatekids.nasa.gov/coral-bleaching/
Since we live on the Adriatic coast, we werw interested in how to maintain the marine ecosystem and its purity, and we visited the Maritime Museum in Split where we had an interesting workshop of biologists dealing eith marine ecology, ecosystem and agreed that at the end of the school year we will have an action to clean one of the beautiful beach.
The next activity was carried out on the occasion of World Forest Day. The students performed several activities of unplagged coding, but also using AI in class. They studied and got to know the trees that grow in the environment of our school, they have plogging activity wich helped to collect even more plastic plugs that we collect as part of humanitarian activity Plug for people with disabilities.
The first activity was to go out into the school yard, using the Plant@Net app, photograph the selected tree. After that the students studied the tree and madea personal identity card of trees by finding various sources on internet. With Pl@ntNet app theymade short videos and revived their tree. The next activity was unplagged coding. Students had to help the B-bot to find the way trough the field but watch out for the discarded plastic.
We registered the activity as an event on the e Twinning platform, but also the EU code week, and through social networks we invited other teachers and students to join us. https://padlet.com/nela9m/Bookmarks Afther this activity we had activity called plogging. Plogging is a term invented by Erik Ahlström referring to the act of picking up trash and litter while jogging.
The students went out to the school yard and had a certain amount of time in which they had to run to collect as much garbage from the school environment as possible. They were divided into groups, and the group that collected the most received the award. It was fun and instructive. We sorted the collected garbage and separated the plastic plugs that we put in our cork collection box. In this way, we have contributed to the Plug for Persons with Disabilities campaign, in which we participate throughout the year. In this way we help both nature and people in need.
We were happy to see the works of the other students on our Padlet. We realized that EU code week , eTwinning and Scientix can connect us with students around the world with a variety of topics and activities. We continued with the “green” activities and signed up for the STEM Discovery Campaign, thus connecting several educational communities and platforms in order to encourage others to think about nature conservation.
http://Book Crator – Go green or go home
