The Grade 4 students at Kinnaird had a great time learning about the concept of sustainability yesterday by playing a simple game called ‘Fishing for Sustainability". Students had to work together to manage their village’s fishing pond and were told they had to catch a minimum number of fish to eat and sell each week to survive. The groups worked together to decide just how many they wanted to eat and sell each week. By the end of the game, every single group had caught far more fish than they truly needed to survive and made far more money by selling fish than they really needed. Even the groups who made more conservative choices still decided to catch more than the minimum number given at the start of the game. When the groups saw the dwindling fish populations in their lakes by the end of the game, they had a hard time explaining why they had chosen to catch more than the minimum requirement. "I guess we just wanted extra, just in case." This led to an interesting discussion about wants versus needs and how to balance the two to achieve sustainability.
