‘Change The World With An Egg Box’ at St Thomas Primary school
It was a real pleasure to be invited to join in the ‘recycling’ work with Year 5 at St Thomas Primary School with the fairandfunky workshop: “Change The World With An Eggbox”. Both classes had completed work on the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle so the workshop consolidated their understanding.
The workshop highlighted the areas in which the students already take their own little steps to change the world: walking to school, growing vegetables, junk modelling, saving energy, not wasting water, buying Fairtrade, re-using shopping bags were just some of the ways Year 5 children change the world.
We tested their knowledge on recycling in a special recycling quiz! Do you know how many double decker buses worth of paper are thrown away each year in the UK?* Ask Year 5 and see if they can remember! Did you know that 290 bags are given away to every single customer by supermarkets every year? Did you know the average family throws away 6 trees worth of paper every year?
What can we do to stop all this waste? How can we change behaviour? Can you make a machine to change the world using recycled materials? This was the challenge presented and the results were inspiring!
ROBO-RECYCLE! With many attachments to help recycle your rubbish
A solar powered hovering machine which sucks up rubbish and recycles!
The RO-BOX – incorporating the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse and recycle.
The Yorkshire Water Whale – cleans polluted waters around the world
A working model! Cleans rainwater through various filters for safe drinking water
The recycling robot to sort your waste
Solar powered robot dog – eats and processes your rubbish!
Not sure what to recycle? Ask this clever machine!
The students combined design, technology and enterprise skills to create a machine to change the world. They worked as a team to plan, design and then make their own model; to then present to their peers at the end: explaining how they made it, why they made it and what it does to change the world. Each group then answered questions from the rest of the class. It was almost “Dragons Den”!
“The workshop was practical, varied in activity, informative and encouraged creativity. It also made the 3 R’s real for the pupils. I would recommend fairandfunky to colleagues!” Class Teacher
It is important to empower people of all ages with the knowledge that their actions can have a positive impact on the world around them; both locally and globally. It isn’t always about encouraging other people to change behaviour, but influencing others through our own behaviour. Class 5P and Class 5C of St Thomas Primary are certainly setting a good example: from growing their own vegetables, to building wormeries; from learning about Fairtrade to implementing the three R’s of recycling.
Congratulations to both classes for taking their own little steps to change the world.
*the answer is 103,488 double decker buses!
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