Let’s go fishing! Fishing for Sustainability, that is. Which is just what Ms. King’s 4/5 class at JA Laird did for some hands-on learning about managing resources. During this game, students were grouped into “villages” tasked with managing fish populations in their lakes, while feeding their villages and buying other supplies.
After a couple of weeks of trading, environmental impacts began to affect the villages. Mirroring real life, flooding, habitat destruction, water pollution, emissions, development and more came into play. This meant fish populations didn’t increase, villages had to pay more for supplies, or they couldn’t sell any fish. However, also like in real life, not all impacts were negative. In some situations, villages cleaned up lakes or restored riparian areas.
The students had a blast this week learning about resource management through managing their fish populations, and discussing how this ties into sustainability and affects future generations.
