Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Sustainability is evident in my local area of County Sligo in our recent award as ‘Ireland’s Cleanest Town’. This award hughlights the grassroots collaboration of local businesses, Tidy Towns committees and the local Council working togeher to make our town a place to be proud of. There is a knock on effect of civic pride in our communities and a determiantion to maintain the recognised standards of low litter in our town. This also has a positive impact on our tourism trade and national and international reputation as an area which values sustainability.
We are particularly blessed in this county to have stunning scenery, mountains, woods and beaches and sustainability here is also very much connected with preseving the beauty of these areas. We have signage in these areas promoting responsible waste mangagement and the provison of bins for litter.
To promote sustainability in my pupils, I would seek to inspire them with the wonder of our local beauty spots in order to spark the pupils’ interest in the ways that we can preserve these beautiful areas. I would organise nature trips such as beach and woodland visits and encourage litter collection in these areas.
I would also work with the Green School Committee to focus on litter management in and around our school grounds. We can teach these values in our immediate environement and then embed them in our locality and areas of natural beauty.
I love the idea of beach cleans up Jessica. When I lived in Portmarnock there was a plaque on the beach encouraging visitors to pick up three pieces of plastic and disposing of them in the bins provided. My children loved this activity and always enjoyed their contribution to keeping their local beach clean.
The beaches here in Sligo are much cleaner than Portmarnock due to the decreased popluation but still become littered unfortunately. We need to teach respect for our beautiful beaches in order to preserve them for many generations to come and I think that organising beach clean ups is wonderful way to promote this amonsgt our pupils.
I really enjoyed this module as a reminder about all the different nutritional benefits that seafood contains. I personally love seafood but my husband and children are not as keen and we are therefore very meat orientated with our meals. This module has given me increased motivation to introduce a least one seafood dish a week into our diets.
The reflection activity in the module made me realise that I tend to rely on the same types of seafood in my diet, tuna, salmon and prawns. We are lucky here to have a brilliant independent fishmonger who travels down from Killybegs with excellent, fresh produce numerous times a week. He has a great variety of seafood so I am going to try and vary the types of seafood and expose the family to some new recipes!
The nutritional benefits are varied and impressive, from vitamin D and omega oils to protein. I would introduce the pupils to the food pyramid as a starting point as this visual is very effective. There are numerous sorting and meal planning activities that can be based on this. I would then encourage them to take part in the I spy supermarket challenge and report back on their findings. I would run group activites such as menu planning and report writing on the nutrional benefits of seafood. I believe that hands on experience is of great value here so a trip to a fishmonger would be a great way to show pupils the variety of seafood we can purchase locally. And finally, the proof is in the tasting and therefore I would make a simple recipe with the pupils such as fish bites or fish tacos so that they could have first hand experience to preparing and tasting some local seafood.
I love the idea of collecting and examining data based on pupils’ preferred seafood and seafood consumption. Pupils of all ages love collecting data and it could be displayed in fun ways using pictograms for the younger pupils and bar and piec charts for the older classes. This would also recreate interest and raise awareness about different types of seafood among the pupil population across the school.
I also teach this age group Orla and I agree that the online lessons can be simplified for the younger classes. I like how you point out the scope for integration across subject areas and how you highlight how these lessons can be adapted in line with the pedagogies of the New Primary Curriculum.
I was really impressed with the Arc online resources and lessons and I could see how they would be a great starting point for introducing pupils to the area of aquaculture. As I work with First and Second class levels, I thought about how they could work for that class level.
I really liked the idea in the previous lesson about giving students the challenge of finding a suitable area for a fish farm using maps. I would adapt this to the Junior end by using simple clear maps and instructions for the conditions that are suitable for fish farms.
I would extend this using the online lessons by asking the pupils to brainstorm the different jobs that you might have if you worked in the aquaculture industry. I would ask the pupils to research some of these jobs in groups and report back with some facts about what the job entails. They could also make their own video presentation about what they like about their job. I would extend the lessons about seafood by asking the pupils to create their own restaurant menus using local products.
A trip to a local aquaculture farm would be an excellent way to reinforce and extend their learning further and the pupils could prepare questions to ask the workers based on their previous input from the Arc lessons.
Stem education deserves a central role in every school improvement plan and as part of the school self evalution process. First the school must audit what it going well and then identify areas for improvemnt. This should include input from all stakeholders. Once an area has been identified for improvement, then staff should decide on targets and actions collaboratively. These will need to be monitored and reviewed and reflected on before deciding what to work on next.
In my experience, clear, achievable targets and simple, easily implemnted actions are the most achieveable and most sucessful.
That is an excellent point about seaweed Karolina. Here is Sligo we have a thriving and very sucessful seaweed bath and product range with Voya. I listened to a radio interview with the founder and it was so interesting to hear how they obtain the local seaweed and recognise the importance of assoociating their brand with the local area. This has been very important for the local econonoy as well as improving the image of the area of Strandhill for tourism.
The location of aquaculture farms along the western seaboard is a fantastic example of how we have adapted industry to our geographical location. These farms offer vital employment to the people of these communties both directly and indirectly.
Here in County Sligo for example there are people employed directly to work in aquacultture and then there is the employment created by the supply of produce to restaurants and cafes in the community. We actually have a dedicated oyster cafe in Sligo town which specialises in locally farmed oysters. This also plays a part in how we package ourselves to tourists as a county with excellent, fresh local produce, from farm to fork.
I remember visiting Killary fjord and sampling the local mussels which were being sold in a pub restaurant in the village. Other towns that I have visitied as a tourist include Castletown Bere and Baltimore ,where there was a great selection of restaurants selling local produce. This has helped shaped the identity of these places as tourist destiantions of high quality seafood and certainly add to the appeal of visiting these beautiful west coast locations.
I think you are right Maria about the importance of providing opportunities to pupils who are not living near the coast and may nut have the same opportunites to appreciate our coastal environement. I also worked in a Deis school and while it was a coastal area, the pupils had limited experience of aquaculture and local sealife in general. A visit from the Arc would have captured their interest and could be followed up by real life visits to the local area of Howth which is renownded for its fishing industry.
I live and work in North County Sligo where there is an abundance of aquaculture on our doorstep. We have a mussel farm and fish farm beside where I live in Lissadell and lobster and crab fishing in Mullaghmore. I think it would be very interesting and informative for pupils to learn about local aquaculture in our area and take a visit to some of these places to see the work in action.
I think a visit from the Arc would be a really engaging way to reinforce the learning about this area. I also think the older pupils in particular would enjoy following the young chefs adventures in the Taste The Atlantic initative.
There is huge scope to integrate aquaculture into the curriculum in social and environmental studies as well as promoting active citizenship by supporting local produce. There is an increased focus in the new curriculum for learning which is relevant to our local context and I think that aquaculture should be included as it is not only important for our economy but it is also part of our heritage.