It's in our Hands
Key Dates (Covid allowing)- Wednesday 1st June and Thursday 2nd June, Expo 2022, G5 classrooms. Please put these dates in your diary. You will be formally invited to one of these sessions nearer the time, to view your child's work but you may wish to pencil them in now, to avoid any work clashes or trips.
Our next Unit of Study in Grade 5 has an environmental focus and culminates in the Grade 5 LearningExpo. In this unit, children will learn about the planet's finite resources and reflect on the future they envisage for themselves. Using the theme of consumer demand and its impact on our planet, students will generate a question to explore in their independent inquiry. Gathering information will require students to plan (limited) field trips, conduct interviews and work as a group. Students will organise and present their findings effectively for a diverse audience, to show their stewardship and responsibility for the environment.
Our thrust in Expo is very much to do with the collective effort that can result in bigger changes than can be achieved individually. Recent thinking has focused on the notion that we can become a much more sharing society, consuming less and living more simply if we reuse and consume in a far more sustainable, ethical way. This requires a shift to working together as a community. Almost every environmental ill, not least the way we eat, in particular the amount and type of meat, comes back to one thing- human consumption. Address the way we consume and we begin to find solutions to the problems we face. Another big focus this year is on the power of biodiversity and natural, green landscapes to help reduce climate change. The water cycle has an under appreciated impact on cooling, and natural landscapes support a healthy water cycle. Regeneration and re-wilding of degraded habitats can make a significant contribution to mitigating against global warming.
The artwork below was created by G5 students and hangs on a wall near the Facilities office.
The quote in it from Charles Kettering says, "My interest is in the future because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there." We would like our students to envisage a future for themselves that is really fulfilling yet also sustainable and to have an awareness of what needs to happen to get there.
Key questions to drive this unit:
- How do people depend on the environment?
- What sustainable initiatives are taking place at school?
- What sustainable initiatives are taking place in Singapore?
- How do people take action to support sustainable environmental change?
- How can consumers or producers make responsible choices for a sustainable environmental future?
Two things...
One, it's a massive learning experience for the children, irrespective of their chosen environmental issue. This unit showcases our student learners at their most powerful at the end of Primary School.As adults, we often are challenged to work successfully in teams, to meet deadlines and to communicate our findings to key stakeholders. Grade 5 children are asked to do just this and they need to be resilient and committed to do so.
Two, it's about getting kids to be passionate about something important and engaging with a wider audience, to help them bring about crucial change.
The idea that the planet is messed up beyond recovery is entirely unhelpful as an approach to this whole issue. Our angle in the Expo is to take an unrelentingly positive approach, so that in identifying an environmental issue, we can recognise that there is always something we can do to make the situation better. With determination and a can-do attitude, anything is possible. Restocked coral reefs, regrown rainforests, rainwater harvesting for renewed agriculture, reclaimed derelict land for community food gardens; these are all real examples of projects where an eco-tipping point was reached and a positive, sustainable change for the better took place.
If you are reading this, then you will recognise that it is our generation and our parents before us who have created this burden of environmental disharmony for our children to carry. It's not their fault, so although they will be doing their utmost to take their own action to change things for the better and to put back into place the wisdom of sustainable living, it is us who have to help them to do it.
Grade 5 children will inspire and lead the way in equal measure in our Expo presentations. They will make a difference and we can look forward to feeling very proud. The exact form of the presentations is still being determined and is dependent on Covid restrictions, but there will certainly be some sharing of the students' key findings with parents and the wider school community.
Expo 2019 (not live in 2020 or 2021!)
Next unit... Rites of Passage.
