"Ready, Steady, Go!" with Year Five

 

Year5 investigated how active travel can mitigate Climate Change and keep us healthy. We took an Auckland Transport prior knowledge quiz, then had great fun creating a giant jigsaw puzzle. It took great communication and awesome team work to solve. 

Just for fun we timed each class completing the jigsaw:

Room 1 - 6:15 

Room 3 - 5min

Room 2 - 5:12

Next we flagged the possible hazards with active travel and matched them with rules to keep us safe.

Next time there will be a new giant jigsaw and we'll be differentiating  between the health benefits and environmental benefits of active travel

Native Tree Planting Update

 The native trees that were planted on the Western Boundary in 2022 are becoming well established.  The children were surprised to see that many of the trees were taller than Mrs Daniel.  Unfortunately the war with the kikuyu grass continues.  This job is always on the 'to do' list!

K3's Final Enviro Lesson

 For our final Enviro lesson, K3 decided to get hands on and take action.  After we reviewed the new food scraps bins, we planted 40 Trees for Survival seedlings, worked in the Edible Garden and released the native trees from kaikuyu grass. Best wises for your continuing enviro journey at intermediate!

Year 6 KNZB Climate Ready Classrooms - Carbon Footprints and Case Studies

 

Today we started with a fun activity to indicate our carbon footprint; we took steps forwards or backwards according to our day to day activities.  Drive to school? Take 3 steps forward.  Compost at home? Take 2 steps back. We learnt that we can all make everyday choices that will reduce our environmental impact. Hopefully humans can balance our carbon in our lifetime. 🤞🌱🌏

Next we learnt about the Greenhouse Effect.  We put our learning into practice by becoming town planners fo the hypothetical town of Boulderville.  They needed a new low impact energy source.  We researched other towns to see which solution would work best and put forward a proposal.  

⚡️From our discussion Aston wondered if we could create perpetual motion turbines to avoid burning stuff. Future Elon Musk!!

Have you heard about the new bioenergy initiative in Auckland and solar farms going into the Waikato.  It's great to see our learning in action for a sustainable world!

K2 Get Future Fit

 Today K2 launched into our learning by exploring biodiversity and the carbon cycle with KNZB Climate Ready Classrooms. We discovered human action is unbalancing the carbon cycle and played a fun game to explore the importance of biodiversity.

Next we investigated the Greenhouse Effect and Carbon Footprints. We used https://www.futurefit.nz/questionnaire to work our our carbon footprints.  The average foot print was 8.4947. International travel effects our footprint the most.

We discovered we can offset by eating less meat, have an electric car or use public transport or walk, compost, less long haul travel, and being careful with energy use.

Learning about climate change can be a bit sad so we talked about things we do to cheer ourselves up like walks, reading, playing sport, gardening and being with friends.

Lastly we focussed on the actions we can take to reduce our footprint and broke into groups to see how we could encourge this action in our community. Some ideas included writing a Kahoot, creating posters, writng a picturebook, a Scratch game, a boards game and a video.

After morning tea we helped to offset our carbon footprint by planting native hebes. Their flowers will feed our bees too.

K2 - Invasion of the Tropical Army Worms!

 K2 reviewed the importance of biodiversity and investigated how climate change will look and feel.

One consequence of climate change we discovered in the Edible Gardens. Because of the warm wet weather we've had an invasion of Tropical Army Worms. After our research we went on a search & destroy mission.

Hopefully the cold snap will help keep these manic munchers at bay.

Room Tahi Get Thinking & Explore Energy

 

Today Room Tahi got thinking about how humans' transformation of energy is causing climate change.  We backtracked to explore what energy actually is and the forms it takes.  We learnt energy cannnot be created or destroyed, but it can be transformed.  As well as reading and online activities we transferred the chemical energy in raisins into kinetic energy when we danced.  

Before morning tea we had fun creating our own static electricity with balloons and used it to pick up feathers. Because it was a humid day we had difficulty charging up our balloons.

As it was a rainy day we couldn't take action outside, so we pushed on to learning about how electricity is created in New Zealand.  Our use of electricity is changing.  Six Room 1 GEMs have electric or hybrid cars. There was a kahoot to review.  

Climate Change - What is the role of science?

Niwa scientists helped us understand the role of science in climate change. Click on the image above to see the online experience we followed.

We set up a fair experiment to test the effect of water saltiness on water density.  

Predictions - 

Oscar - the water is going to turn blue

Charlie - one will be lighter and one darker

Mason - one might be heavier and one might be lighter

Ella - the ice will melt slower in the salt water

Zach - the salt might rise to the top

Ashton - The salt water ice cube will melt faster

Cayley - the salt water is thicker

Kavya - the saltwater will rise

Dylan - the freshs waterwill rise and the saltwater will rise more

Edward - salt melts ice so the ice will melt quicker

Phoenix - the ice won't melt in the salt

We found the fresh water sat on the top of the salt water as it is less dense.  That means as the polar ice caps melt the fresh water will sit on top of the ocean and could change the currents.  Fresh water is also more acidic.  A more acidic ocean will effect the sea creatures with shells.

Knowing that CO2 levels were 400ppm 4 years ago, we predictedt the Co2 level today:

Brian - 800ppm

Vihan - 900 ppm

Nicholas - 600 ppm

William - 700 ppm

Edward - 300ppm

Dylan - 480ppm

The actual level is 424.78 ppm.  This means that despite knowing C02 causes climate change it is still rising.

Lastly we created posters to show the future we want to see and took action to help our native trees.

Slide Deck Showing the Future We Want to See

Next time we see Mrs Daniel we'll be reminding ourselves of the carbon cycle and exploring how it effects biodiversity.  We'll also look at the possible effects of climate change, especially on our Pacific neighbours.

K2 Climate Change Challenge

 

Today K2 began looking at climate change. We began by clarifying the misconception that the hole in the ozone layer is to do with climate change.  It doesn't have anything to do with climate change but does go to show humans can come together to fix their environmental mistakes.

Next we took part in a Climate Change Breakout provided by Live Lightly at the Eye On Nature event. We worked as a team to solve the clues and learnt everyday actions we can take to live a lower carb life:

- bike or walk

- eat vegetarian more

- reuse items

Our time was 9minutes and 15 seconds. We won the class competition!! Mrs Daniel said we were quickest because we had great communication. 

Next we found out there is lots of misinformation about climate change. We did a Kahoot and sorting game to investigate ideas about climate change and causes of carbon dioxide using the new KNZB Climate Ready Classroom resource. 

Next time we'll learn about the role of scientists.

K1 Break Into Climate Change & Stormwater

 K1 had a busy Sustainability session with Mrs Daniel today.  We began by starting our enquiry into climate change.  

We discussed what we already knew and how it makes us feel:

Ashton: the climate is changing and the ice is melting and it makes me sad.  Joe Biden and the Willow Project are bad.

Edward: the air is getting hotter and there's going to be more floods.   Animals can't adapt to the climate.

We clarified that the ozone layer hole isn't to do with climate change but it does go to show that humans can change their habits and reverse the negative effects they have caused.

Next we did a Climate Change breakout provided by Live Lightly at the Eye on Nature Event.  We timed ourselves and are going to compete against the other Year 6 classes for the grand prize.

K1 thought the break out was exciting and difficult.  We used our brain power.  We learnt to work together, how we can live more sustainably, and to yell out answers so everyone knows. We wonder if we'll be the quickest ...

The times:

K3 - 16m 36s

K2 - 9m15s WINNERS

K1 - 15m 15s

We continued making meaning and connections about climate til morning tea.

Next we had a surprise special guest; Monique from the Stormwater Sleuths for a citizen science project looking at pollution in our drains.

Meet our trap:

We emptied the trap and audited the waste. 

We'll monitor and log the waste each month.