Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Great ideas here – It is only when you read other peoples posts that you realise how much is already going on in schools but it is important to name these for the children, staff and community.
During the year myself and another member of staff took part in a number of sustainable workshops with SEAI. These were hugely beneficial as they lead us to examine our current practice in the school. One of the first things we did was an audit of the building and looking at what we were doing right and what we needed to improve. We looked at heating, light, energy, waste and water.
We are collecting rainfall and this is used to flush the toilets in the school. We have push taps in our classroom toilets so taps are not left running accidently. We have light sensors in to ensure lights are only being used when needed. We asked for the professionals to come out and do an audit to see if there were more ways to improved and we decided it was important that the children are the leaders in this area. Children are involved in our green team – planting, creating areas of biodiversity, being energy monitors. Their voices are heard via a subcommittee of our student council.
We also are looking this year at being more sustainable in our clothing – liaising with Parent’s Association we hope to recycle old school uniforms and old Halloween costumes.Really like the idea of using sport and how we fuel our bodies. Finding a way to get the content across in a meaningful way can be difficult at times but this is a great accessing it.
This module was really interesting and I think the content is very adaptable for use with the children. Looking at the food pyramid and the nutritional content of different food groups would be a great lesson, especially for the older children.
I love the idea of the i-spy game and with quite a big Centra close to the school that we have very good links with then I think the idea of going to the shop and getting the children checking food labels. Identifying where their food is coming from, has it been sustainably sourced etc.
In previous years in the school we have done a ‘Bake off’ but after watching videos in the modules and adapting the ‘Taste the Atlantic’ idea we could get the children designing a recipe using fish as its main ingredient. We could vote on the finalist and get a couple of the children to cook up their dish – we could even invite members from the community who run the local gastropub to come in and judge.Love this idea. I think the children would get a real kick out of writing to the farmer or meeting the farmer. Anything to make it more meaniful and real to them would be a huge benefit
I really enjoyed these lesson – much more than I expected. As the lessons presented in an extremely child friendly manner they make the information so much more accessible than if the children were reading from a book. The mix of facts and personal experience of the presenter (eating oysters) really engaged the viewer.
There are so many ways in which we can bring aquaculture into lessons across the curriculum – from history (stories, myths and legends) to SPHE (how we look after our bodies); from geography (maps and looking at our to locality) to Sciences & Arts (creative solutions to problems).
We have a link with Clogherhead lifeboats and some of the children visited there recently on a school tour. I think we could easily extend the learning by maybe visiting some fish producers in the area and the children trying out some fish. We could also visit the Boyne and recreate re-enact the story of Fionn McCool and the Salmon of Knowledge. We take part in the ‘Food Dudes’ programme so encouraging the children to widen their testing palette would be a nice extension.I would be very similar to a number of participants and have very little knowledge of agriculture (I probably shouldn’t admit I’m married to a farmer) and even less of aquaculture so I really found many elements of this module very useful and they were shared in a very user friendly manner. I found the maps and diagrams as well as the videos very helpful. I had done courses on climate change before but hadn’t come across the 5 different climates before. I loved the term ‘Goldilocks’ weather and think this would be something that children could really understand.
Living on the east coast of Ireland, between Dublin Bay and Clogherhead, you can see how much aquaculture is taking place and the reliance of many business and families on it economically – from those taking part in the farming of the fish, to those harvesting, packing, selling and using as an end product. It is a huge industry and one that should be protected by the BIM and the Irish government.I had come across the phrase aquaculture a good few number of years ago but did not really have much in-depth knowledge about it. I found the first module so informative from the life cycle of the salmon to the videos of mussel production; it was also so much more interesting than I thought.
The videos were so well produced and really engaged with the viewer. When you are hearing personal stories, you become much more invested in the topic. There are so many fabulous opportunities for those who are interested in this area and it is so much more than fishing.
I knew very little about the resources that were available and after seeing the video on the ARC, I am not surprised that there is such a long waiting list. I would love to have it in to our school. We are based closed to the coast/beach and feel it is definitely an underutilised resource on doorstep. The resources available are so child friendly and accessible that they will definitely be of benefit to the children.