Mildred's Blog: Plastic Bags

Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Plastic Bags

Our Mantle is well underway, already! It just happened! I've not even completely finished my plan for it, but so far so good!
I decided to use the storm in Greymouth that uncovered an old dump site as my initial hook, we read the newspaper articles about the plastic bags littering the beach and were amazed at how they showed no sign of breaking down after all these years. We used freeze frame and thought tapping to imagine what the poor residents of that area were going through. I took photos which we used to write newspaper headlines and captions to explain what was going on in each image.
The children were eager to come up with solutions to the problem so we used "gifting" to assist in the clean up. This involved coming up with a "gift", an invention or a method that would either clean up the beach or make use of the plastic bags collected. The class drew their ideas and presented them to various groups posing as the residents of Greymouth that we had used during the initial freeze frame activity. Some of their ideas were pretty creative!
These drama activities all sparked some wonderings and questions about plastic bags in general, and everyone had a lot to share about what they already knew about plastic bags. They started asking questions about how long it takes for a plastic bag to break down, how many are produced and used in New Zealand, why some supermarkets use them and some charge for them, how they can be recycled or used to make something else... and the research they undertook to find answers to their own questions just happened! Like spontaneously! I didn't even need to prompt them or say anything about finding out... they just went and found out all by themselves!
Small groups decided to present what they'd found out and asked for paper to make posters. The photos below show how into it they were, it was really a wonderful thing to see everyone involved and keen to be a part of every step, right down to every child contributing to the posters in some way. Our company was soon established, we did the whole name, logo, voting, mission statement bit and ended up with the company name NET (National Environmental Team). I must admit I didn't really love the name but that's what they voted for so that is what it is. We discussed the premises and created our building in our imaginations, I didn't want to spend ages making maps etc this time around. So it was a surprise (a good one) when I came in after a wet lunchtime to find the majority of the class sitting on the floor creating a 3 dimensional model of the company building out of scrap paper and sellotape. So cute! They had even made air conditioning units (labeled), and furniture, used felt tips to draw on furnishings, created stairs and made a very cute helicopter!
Next time I think I shall provide card for them to use. They had the rulers out and were measuring, using compasses (I showed them how they worked to draw circles and now they are constantly "needing" them for various things!) they were striving for accuracy, working collaboratively, problem solving, and I was like WOW!
So they've started collecting plastic bags to experiment with now. They are keen to try fusing plastic with an iron, make plarn to knit and crochet with, and make parachutes!
I love my motivated class :)

OK, so now my stupid internet won't let me put my photos on. I'm posting this now and I'll add the photos later.

It is later...