[Clodagh Long]

I love the idea of this fundraiser! It is a great way to raise awareness about the deposit return scheme and encourage people to use this!

[Clodagh Long]

Climate change affects my local area in many ways. It can be seen in the more extreme weather conditions we see every year with hotter temperatures in the summer and colder in the winter. Natural disasters like storms and floods are becoming more common also. Flooding is a big problem in my area with rivers and the sea flooding regularly and creating a huge issue for my local community to deal with.
The way in which I would engage my pupils to explore this further is looking back on the history of this issue. We could make a collection of evidence that shows this is a problem in our local community. This evidence could then be used to create an action project which searches for solutions to help combat this issue. The children could then compile their findings and send this to a local councillor to see if there is something we can do as a community to help prevent this issue.

Three actions I can do to make the world a better place and slow down climate change include:
Reducing the use of my car: I try to use public transport, walking and carpooling as much as possible now to reduce carbon footprint.
Using reusable water bottles and lunch boxes daily. This reduces the use of non-biodegradable plastics and is better for the environment. It is also more cost effective!
Recycle as much as possible, use bottle banks provided, use green bins and try to re use any objects or materials that there may be an alternative use for.

The way I would use this lesson in the classroom is to raise awareness in my school about climate change and what we can do to help. I also think covering this in the classroom would help to settle any children who are experiencing bio-anxiety. I would let the children approach this through guided discovery and research. I would then work collaboratively with them on how they would like to act on this information.

[Clodagh Long]

I really like the idea of safe spaces, I would have originally thought of safe spaces as somewhere for children with additional needs to have a moment to reset. I now think this would be a great place for refugees or any other children experiencing trauma.

[Clodagh Long]

There are many ways in which my school and students could take action to support refugees. The first should be to identify the refugees in our school, learn as much as we can about their country and culture so that we can find ways to make them comfortable in our school. It would be important to find obstacles that may be in the place of the refugee’s learning and help find solutions to combat this. This could mean ensuring they get a good meal in school or can complete their homework in a quiet place in the morning before school. We can never fully replicate their own school environment but we can do our best. The next step could be to set up a buddy system, find out what children would be interested in and pair them with refugees to help with fitting into school. This buddy system could then also develop into peer tutoring between older classes and younger classes. This could allow children not to fall behind in academics.

[Clodagh Long]

I definitely agree that this is an area which is vital for children to be aware of. The idea of starting with these lessons and then leading into pen pals with the class is an excellent idea and would love to bring this into my own classroom next year!

[Clodagh Long]

I will focus on Goal 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all and Goal 7: Life below water. When reading this assignment question I was reminded of a conversation I had with my fifth class students this year. The discussion was based around a water outage in the area and the effect it had on the children and their families. School was cancelled that day, they had takeaways for dinner and some training was cancelled. On the other hand some kids complained of a bad smell from the toilets and were anxious about the lack of water. This global goal may relate to the children’s lives but I think they would also be interested to learn about why this goal is so important on a worldwide level. Water is an essential need for all human beings and it is vital that this goal is met, educating children about this is a step in the right direction. Children may be affected by access to water on a local level but as well as that learning about why this is a sustainable goal will hopefully have the desired effect, that they will want to take action.

I would encourage my children to take action by assigning them a class project to research countries around the world and their access to water. They could then research ways in which we can improve people’s access to water around the world. As well as that we could look at life below water and how important it is to keep the water we do have in the world clean and healthy for those who use it and those who live in it. We could make posters as a class to put up around the school to raise awareness about the subject.

[Clodagh Long]

I think the concept of having an open discussion about gender stereotypes could be very useful in many classroom situations. Rather than being stuck to a rigid lesson plan just a relaxed discussion could reveal some interesting thoughts and opinions in the class.

[Clodagh Long]

There is no doubt that I have seen gender stereotypes affecting my students in my previous 5th class in an Educate Together school. This varied from clubs they chose to who they assigned jobs to in the classroom.
The scenario I will discuss is the choosing of Friday clubs which work as a reward in our school for good behaviour throughout the week. The sports club was always a very popular club choice for the boys, only ten children were allowed to sign up for this club. There was outrage in the class when a couple of weeks into term a number of girls decided they wanted to take part in a sports club meaning some of the boys had to choose a different club. They argued it was not fair and that sports club was more of a boys activity anyways. It also shocked me to hear when I spoke to the girls that they had been hesitant to ask to join this club as they knew it was mainly for boys and they were not sure if they would be allowed to play. My reaction to this was to set up a fair system in which the people who wished to be in sports clubs rotated throughout the year.
In order to combat these stereotypes in the classroom I would teach a number of lessons about stereotypes and gender equality to ensure the children were informed about why they had these feelings and thoughts about sports clubs. By helping the children to fully understand this, this would allow them to try to be aware of these stereotypes in the future and do their best to not allow them to alter their judgements or thoughts surrounding different things in society.

[Clodagh Long]

The author saw a change in “culture attitudes” towards racism in especially Irish young people (Ehigie, 2021). This is no doubt due to the increase in Development Education in schools around the country in recent years. This has caused many young people to become more involved in “global activism”. (Ehigie, 2021)

Development education is important as in order to improve our global society we must first teach ourselves and others about our global compatriots. Although there are many issues at hand in our own local society it it’s important not to let this distraction us from real injustice happening all around the world today. (Ehigie, 2021)

In my own teaching I would take the advice from Ehigie’s (2021) paper. I would try to include “insights on the common humanity we share with those around us, and the work we can do to impact members of our community in positive ways.” (Ehigie, 2021)

This could be done in many subjects such as Geography, History and Learn Together in my Educate Together school. The concept of Global goals was used as our learn together theme last year so following on from this we could have a whole school focus on these next year. In my own classroom I would assign research projects and complete whole class guided discovery activities to allow the children to explore the concept of global injustice and what we can do to have a positive impact on our global society.

References

Ehigie, E (2021) ‘The Role of Global Citizens in Today’s World’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, Vol. 33, Autumn, pp. 135-144.

[Author]

Posts