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Climate change is having a big impact on my local area, with an increase in storms, wind speed rainfall accompanied by a decrease in sunlight resulting in people’s health being affected, crops not yielding as much as before and floods occurring more frequently. Local wildlife suffer a lot from the changing weather and it is important to make all children aware of the seriousness of this issue. One action I could carry out in school is for children to analyse their carbon footprint and how they can improve it. I would organise days where children cycle to school and days where children walk to school to reduce their carbon footprint. For my second action, I would set up a school garden. In it, we would plant a variety of fruit and vegetables. This garden would be maintained by all the children in the school, and when the crops have grown we will showcase what was involved to encourage parents to do this at home with their children. The third action I would undertake is to discuss with the school officials about putting in timed lights. This would greatly reduce the amount of energy being wasted on lights throughout the year and help our climate.
Hi Seán,
The buddy system is a great idea for the newcomers to settle in the school and develop their social skills with their new peers.
My community has a group called Kildare Integration Network which promotes integration across multiple districts in county Kildare. Our school does a lot to promote inclusion to people from all backgrounds into our community. Our EAL teachers provide extra support to refugees coming into the school, ensuring that their English improves to help them across all their subjects and help with their social skills in school. We hosted a massive multi-cultural day, with over 38 different nationalities represented on the day. Each stall contained food from the different countries, clothes from the different countries, flags and games and activities. Each class got to go around to the different stalls and talk to the parents at the stalls about their culture. This was one of the best days in the school year as I had nine different nationalities represented in my class. At the end of the day, there was a performance by children from different countries which was a great success.
Hi Nicole,
Your initiatives are ideal to help children understand that they can all make a difference and have a responsibility to look after our planet.
A Sustainable Development Goal that I would like to discuss is SD 13: Climate Action. Climate change is a pressing issue, both nationally and internationally, causing major changes to our weather patterns. This affects our crops, wildlife, people’s wellbeing and health. In other countries, the changing weather patterns are affecting children attending school due to adverse weather conditions and diseases. To support climate action in my school, I would take my class on field trips to local farms, engage in talks with local food producers, and explore the changing weather patterns in our area over the past 100 years. We would also explore the impact on local wildlife. This research can help the children create projects in groups to showcase to the rest of the school on the issues we face and possible solutions. Finally, to gain a deeper understanding of the depravity of climate change, I would link up with schools from the different corners of Ireland and further afield, to discuss how our local areas are affected, the changes in weather patterns and possible solutions to these issues. These actions would help the students to support Ireland’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Hi Catherine,
That is a brilliant idea to invite people of both genders in who work in careers typically deemed for the other gender. This will help the children recognise that they can work in whatever job they want when they are older.
It is clear to me that all children face gender stereotypes from a young age, especially here in Ireland. During the past year I have witnessed this when the children were engaging in STEM projects. The children were divided into mixed ability groups and had to come up with projects to help their local environment. Almost immediately, the girls started taking notes, recording their ideas, and the boys were explaining the materials they would use and how they would make it. This was limiting both the boys and the girls learning experiences, confining them to traditional gender roles. Development Education methodologies can tackle these stereotypes by promoting and encouraging equality, diversity and fairness within the classroom environment. It is important to show role models of both genders to the children, allowing them to recognise that they are not limited by their gender and eliminate the barriers many children face all over the world.
Having read ‘The Role of Global Citizens in Today’s World’ by Eric Ehigie, it is clear to me that the development of a world that is united as one, with the aim of ending stereotypes and encouraging people all over the world to become more understanding of each other and learn to live together in peace and tranquility. As we are one big global family, it is important that we educate children about the challenges faced across the globe; such as poverty, disease, famine, inequality etc. I will teach my fourth class all about the challenges many people face on a daily basis, to help them gain an awareness and understanding of the seriousness of these issues. I will also teach the children the importance of appreciating what we have here in Ireland and what other countries have all across the earth. As I will have an extremely diverse class next year, I will integrate international issues into the various subjects and allow children to work in groups to develop various skills while learning. I would also set up a professional development workshop for teachers to understand what’s the best way to start teaching this topic and the significance of teaching this area to a high standard.
Hi Enda,
I like your use of digital resources in your project and that children will be able to use a range of different skills.
The research question that I have come up with is ‘How can we as a group reduce our carbon footprint to help our local climate’. As a class group I will have set up a weather station to continuously record the weather in our local area. We would compare the results with online resources to see how much it has changed from long ago. The children would make note of the various times they use resources that burn fossil fuels. We would conduct a class and school survey on how children get to school. We would continue to do this once a week and present our results to the whole school to hopefully raise awareness about our situation and make children aware that the damage they are doing can be prevented with simple changes. I would invite local environmentalist guest speakers also to speak to the children about the important role they have in saving our environment.
I have selected the third assignment on the different activities. The resource I interacted with was ‘Nose High Up in the Sky’. I found this resource to be exceptionally well structured and quite interesting to engage with. I loved interacting with the old weather proverbs and I believe this would really capture the children’s interest and they would find these very enjoyable to learn about. The children could also be asked to discuss them with their parents before moving onto the second activity which is all about making use of our different senses to accurately look at and discuss the weather. Children will do reasonably well in this activity, and comparing to actual weather forecasts at the end will be of great interest and excitement to the children. The third and final activity perfectly connects and brings all three activities together for the group. I would use all these activities as it teaches the children various skills on how to measure, set up and record weather data in an appropriate and correct fashion.
Yann Arthus-Bertran’s video ‘Home’ is a fantastic video capturing the amazing, natural beauty our planet possesses, while also showing the catastrophic damage humans are causing to our natural environment. This video enables the people viewing it to really think about how lucky we are to live on this earth and realise the seriousness of the damage we are causing. It is a great video to get conversations going, encouraging those watching it to see the issues we are causing and come up with ideas on how to rectify these major issues. Personally, I would divide this video up into different sections to use across a range of sequential lessons. I would use one video per lesson and then get children to create large concept maps on each section. I would split the children into groups to create digital and physical posters on greenhouse gases. Finally, I would show the children Greta Thunberg’s TED Talk to show them that their voices matter and can make a change.
Hi Enda,
Your activities are great for children of all ages to gain a deeper understanding of the effects of greenhouse gases.
Activity 3:
This is a very hands-on and engaging lesson that I will definitely make use of with my fourth class next year. At the lesson introduction stage, I will split the children into mixed ability groups and, using whiteboards, I will give the children time to record everything they know about weather and climate. I will record what each group has noted as it will allow me to elicit their prior knowledge. The Paxi video is well suited for my class, and is very informative for the children. Each group would record what they learned during the video, before moving on to the Teel Tool website. I would demonstrate how to use the tool before inviting the children the chance to engage with the tool in their groups. This will allow the children to explore how climate changes affect different areas and give them a more holistic learning experience on climate and weather.