Technology - Planning Future Playgrounds

Designing playgrounds and creating models was such a fun, motivating learning experience with all children thoroughly immersed in the task.

The models only had to be examples of chosen playground equipment rather than whole playground designs, but one group begged to differ finishing their entire playground as a model version including toilets!

Gliders

Getting ready for our glider competition!

Here are some of our gliders so far.  We were pretty lucky to be given some coreflute (the stuff that real estate signs are made out of). It's easy to cut and is nice and light.  Some of us brought other recycled materials from home such as foam, cardboard tubes, plastic bags and umbrella material.

UPDATE:  see below for the winners in our categories
- Fly the furthest
- Most innovative design
- Tidiest construction
- Sturdiest construction
- Neatest trick

Voted one of the most sturdiest design

Voted tidiest construction and neatest trick

 

Voted tidiest construction

Voted tidiest construction

Voted most sturdiest construction... 

after it broke on the first test and was then reinforced with lots of masking tape!

Voted most innovative design

Voted most innovative design

Plastic - Take Action

It was clear that although we are an Enviro school, plastic packaging and plastic shopping bags are an ongoing problem.  We need to keep talking and sharing our enviro learning with each other, our families and friends.

We thought it would be a great idea to create action heroes out of recyclable plastic as educational tools to share our enviro messages.  Together as a class we designed our task.

Plastics - Explore Alternatives

After agreeing that superheroes and action heroes are catchy and motivating educational tools to get a message across, we researched all things superhero/action hero.  We collated our research and ideas on "mood boards".  This was the fun part!

Plastics - Identifying Current Situation

We split up into teams and decided on what each team would focus on.

Team 1 went to New World with our student teacher Mr Van Vroonhoven and tallied the amount of plastic bags they saw people walking out with.  They also how noted how many were using enviro friendly alternatives to plastic bags.

Team 2 emailed Room 14 as we knew they had conducted a survey on how much rubbish was being left around school.  We wanted to know what the rubbish they were collecting consisted of - was it mostly the dreaded plastic packaging???  Yes it was!

Team 3 designed and sent a survey home to parents asking them about their views on our nude food program at school, and also if they used alternatives to plastic bags when shopping.  We got lots of honest, responses.

Team 4 went around the school and took photos of problem areas where rubbish seems to accumulate, and took photos.  Sigh - we found lots of rubbish lying around, even outside our own room!

The last team researched for further information on plastic, what the little recycling numbers on the bottom of containers meant etc to share with the rest of the class.