Our inquiry is re-focussing on sustainability, concentrating on how consumerism, energy use and unequal consumption are impacting on the biosphere. Are we being responsible global citizens in our individual and community actions? What rights and responsibilities do we have, if we are to be effective contributors to a sustainable, fair and enjoyable future? We are moving from the question and research stage (launch and begin exploring) into the deeper exploration phase, before we begin creating/making.
We have been very focussed on exploring the meaning of sustainability, and what it means for us, our school, and our community. In inquiry workshops we have been exploring design and in particular, the engineering design process, with students developing their understanding of the steps involved in generating ideas, drawing a concept, considering materials, planning and designing, and thinking about model construction. We started with a redesign of a plastic bottle into another useful object, so that it doesn’t go to landfill, and costs us less, with ideas such as: a watering can, hanging flower pot, storage container, water container, food container, an hourglass timer, or bird house.
We have been exploring sustainable architecture and the built environment, which will be the major provocation for the remainder of the term. We have now challenged the students to think about and then design the school and classroom of the future: what would a sustainable school or classroom look like, feel like?
A focus in mathematics will be number and place value, followed by shape and area, as we will be considering very large numbers when looking at global issues, and thinking about the shapes and sizes of our models, and to demonstrate our mathematical thinking.
We have finalised our ‘shops’ inquiry by completing an analysis of our businesses: were they sustainable? Were they profitable? Would we want to run our own business in the real world?
“We were looking at videos of green buildings, and there was a lot of enthusiasm about getting a waterfall in here, with green walls and plant boxes to get clean air in here”.
“They really inspired me to get lots of trees around the school, as they reduce the temperature by seven degrees!”
“We think we could build a second story in the neighbourhood with a green wall”.
“We could install treadmills and zip lines to generate power, whilst we’re learning and having fun!”
