Primary teacher Stella Astill explains how her class have been exploring global and ‘eco’ issues, and have raised funds for good causes.
The Year Four children at Our Lady Queen of Peace Primary school in Worcester have spent the Spring term being ‘Earth Entrepreneurs’ and learning about different global issues and all things Eco. As part of their learning, they wrote persuasive letters to encourage other classes to donate scrap paper to them for making new note books; composed poems and explanation texts to educate the other children in school about how to make it more eco-friendly; carried out surveys of the school environment and researched and produced projects about various world-wide problems affecting our planet for homework. This research then helped them write their own ‘Global Issues Guide’ as a class. In their Forest school lessons they made recycled products from nature and things which they found around school which were no longer needed.
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As part of their Design and Technology lessons they focused on using ‘rubbish’ to make new things. They began by using scrap materials to create a collage of the world and then used the things they would usually throw away at home to make waste men and women sculptures. The theme culminated in a project where they formed new ‘businesses’ in groups to design and make a recycled product. To make sure it would be appealing for their costumers to buy, they researched existing products already out there; produced adverts and wrote a persuasive report which they recorded for advertising on the school website. In an end of theme assembly the children introduced their businesses and their new products and then went on to hold an Eco stall to raise money for different charities which help address the global issues they have been learning about in class.
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Year Four were amazed to raise £100.00 from the sale of their products: ‘Tin Man’, ‘The Pencil, ‘Pencil pot’, ‘The Little Treasure box’, ‘Perfect Pencil holders’, ‘Recycled Pencils’, ‘The Bird House Feeder’, ‘The Anything Bag’, ‘Pencil Pots’ and ‘Brilliant Bookmarks’, along with their Forest school crafts.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="524"] Craft items they made from recycled materials[/caption]
They happily donated £25.00 of it to Think Global as they appreciate how teaching others about global issues is the first step towards beginning to solve them and making the world a better place for us all to live.
We were really pleased to get this donation! Thanks very much to Year Four and Stella Astill, from all the staff at Think Global.