The Blue School team of our school, Gymnasium of Anthousa from Greece, cares about ocean life without plastic.
For this reason, our school supported the 2022 STEM Discovery Campaign. As a contribution to the campaign, we participated in the live event in April 12th 2022 with the tittle: “UNDERSTANDING AND ACTING FOR A HEALTHY PLASTIC FREE SEA”. The working language of this event was English.
We joined with the eTwinning partner schools: Alytus Jotvingiai Gymnasium from Lithuania and Liceo Linguistico “Ilaria Alpi” di Cesena from Italy.
The event focused on examining and understanding the paths of plastic pollution, the impact on marine ecosystems and new technologies for observation and removal. Students also refered to different sectors of the blue economy, in a circular economy perspective, by spreading a message.
The contribution of our school are the following activities.
1. Let’ s play the board game Snakes and Ladders “without plastics in the seas!”
The main purpose of this board game (Snakes and Ladders) is to raise environmental awareness, which concentrates on ocean life without plastic.
When a player lands on a ladder, moves to a square with a higher number. This action represents that he/she did something good for the environment. When a player lands on a snake’s head, moves to a square with a lower number. This action represents that he/she harmed the environment. There are also some squares that make you move some steps forward or backwards, depending on the player’s environmental actions. The participants of this board game can be at least two.
2. We CLEAN beaches – We RESPECT our environment!
On Monday 11/4 our school visited the beach of Rafina, which is located 17 km close to Anthousa. During our school program, the students – members of the Blue School participated in an action which was about cleaning a beach.
At first, the were students divided into groups. Each group received a folder, which included a map of the area and a worksheet. At this worksheet the students wrote down the types of rubbish that they met, annotations and questions.
They not only wrote down the types of rubbish that they saw, but also took pictures, observed the beach and orientated themselves. Since at that day the weather was unsettled and windy, the next day at school, they placed on a paper the rubbish they collected and observed their types. These were mostly out of plastic and they hat as origin the land. The majority of them were for a long time on the beach or in the sea.
One of the students volunteered and was “tied” from the other students with a thin rope, in order to be in the place of an animal that is trapped at fishing net. She felt panic, despair, being trapped and fear. She mentioned that after hours she would feel hunger and the danger that a predator might attack.
3. A video titled: POLLUTION IN THE MEDITERANNEAN SEA
Within the framework of the blue school project in our school “Gymnasium of Anthousa Attikis” in Greece, the students created a video about the pollution in the Mediterranean Sea. This video participated in a competition organized from The Hellenic Centre for Marine Research and won the first price, during the school year 2020-2021.
