This week in Ms Dunham’s grade 6/7 class at Yaqan Nukiy the students played ‘Fishing for Sustainability’. Each group was a village that had to manage the population of fish in their lake. They also had to feed their village, get supplies for the village and run an economy. Each village had their own way to manage their renewable resource. There were also ‘wild cards’ that affected the village. Sometimes the village did riparian planting and their fish population increased a little more than usual. Other times they had to pay for extra repairs to their village because of a rogue storm. Or there was some kind of pollution event that impacted their fish population.
At the end of the game, I asked students whether they would be happy to pass on their village to the next generation? Some said yes because they managed to have a healthy population of fish, supplies and money. Others said no, because of a combination of luck and management they didn’t have very many fish for the next generation. The students thought that their village could be impacted by population growth. They also made a connection that if the lake ecosystem was unhealthy or the harvest was too high then their fish population would be affected.
The grade 4/5s made recycled paper today. They were intrigued by how they could use the paper that was tossed in the recycling bin to make a craft paper. It was a team effort to create the pulp, screen the pulp, dry it and roll it. Many students figured out they they could reuse the ‘effluent’ from the drying station back into the blender station. This a great way to make the recycling process more tangible for the students.