As a final wrap up celebration, Mrs. Spensely/Ms Gibbard’s class had one more food related activity: a Real Food Potluck! Real Food is defined as: · Nutritious: healthy · Near: local · Now: seasonal · Naked: not packaged in disposable wrappers · Natural: whole foods or not heavily processed The students did a great job … Continued
Water is a necessity of life, so that means that everyone alive has sufficient water, right? Wrong! As the grade 5/6’s in Mrs. Reinarz’s class learned through the Our Water activity, there is not enough available clean water to meet the worlds use. During this activity, students had to decide how to distribute water among … Continued
Is your water clean? Is it accessible? As it turns out, this depends on where you live in the world. As Mme Lapierre’s class discovered, most Canadians have access to clean drinking water but many people around the world do not. This week’s lesson, Our Water, had the students re-enacting two alternative water accessibility scenarios. … Continued
Mrs. Spensely/Ms. Gibbard’s gr 5/6 class had the opportunity before spring break to do a project for the Earth, as a celebration of what they’ve been learning in Beyond Recycling. This class is big into art, so we decided to make decorations for the new school garden. In small groups, the students designed and decorated … Continued
This year’s Beyond Recycling classes are very keen to use art as a medium for reducing their ecological footprint, especially in the waste category. After diverting household waste into art, Mme Lapierre’s class kept this theme going by making new paper out of old paper. Homemade recycled paper is a fun, straightforward activity – albeit … Continued
There is a small but important difference between weather and climate. As Mrs. Reinarz’s class learned, weather is the air temperature and precipitation on a daily basis – is it raining, snowing, sunny, cloudy etc. Climate also looks at air temperature and precipitation, but over a much longer time frame. Climate is the long-term pattern … Continued
Have you ever worked at a recycling depot? Mrs. Reinarz’s gr 5/6’s can now say they have. After learning all about the waste in our world and how it’s changed over time, the students got to try their own hands at reducing what ends up in the landfill. Making your own recycling depot isn’t as … Continued
The grade 6 students in Mme Lapierre’s class started their Beyond Recycling learning talking about how we use waste in our world. After doing a classroom waste audit and looking at how the type and amount of waste has changed since ancient times, the students discussed simple and complex ways to reduce their own impact. … Continued
Earth Day is a special celebration in Beyond Recycling classes, and Mrs. Turcon’s class undertook a special project to show their appreciation. In conjunction with their grade 7 buddy class, the grade 5s used felt to create a wall hanging for the school’s multi-purpose room. First, the students learned the ins and outs of using … Continued
Climate change is a challenging topic to grasp, so thankfully Mrs. Turcon’s class had a series of visuals to help them work through it. First, a model scale was created to help visualize the balance between carbon producers (forest fires, volcanoes, humans burning fossil fuels) and carbon absorbers (trees, oceans). With this, students could see … Continued
