NATURE'S CLOSE UPS!

Climate justice, Laudato Si, Catholic Social Teaching, Global Goals

As the year draws to a close, the students from Middle Matters have completed their amazing inquiries into Climate Justice.

This brief snapshot of presentation slides gives a glimpse into how they've made the connections between the facts,the Global Goals, Catholic Social Teaching and the papal encyclical, "Laudato Si."

 

Furthermore, they have raised awareness amd discussed possible actions that can be taken, even as a primary student!

UPCYCLING

After watching BTN's fabulous presentation on "Upcycling," we began to experiment with some key persuasive devices such as writing a provocative opening sentence, experimenting with rhetorical sentences and using modality to emphasise our opinions.    http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s4183196.htm

Here are some of our thoughts!

From Ciaran: 

Do you know the future of rubbish?... you should!! Everyone knows what recycling is, but do you know about the wiser upcycling? 50,000 kids in Australian are using upcycling and absolutely loving it. It puts some good fun and imagination into your life and it seems to be affecting the environment… in  an eco friendly way of course.

What is upcycling ?

Most the time upcycling products can’t be recycled. You take trash and make it into your own clever idea. For example school kids have been using old dirty tooth paste into clever little headbands. You must try this fun,creative,eco friendly idea.

From Elisa: 

So have you ever heard of the word upcycling? Well everybody should know what it means … Upcycling is where you can take trash and turn it into something new without changing its formation.

Well what is the difference whether you recycle or upcycle? When you upcycle the product stays in its original shape but when you recycle it turns into something totally different.

There are 50,000 children in Australia that are in a program where you bring things that can be recycled, then you make anything you want. You can even turn trash into a decoration!

From Brandon P: Rubbish is surely useless right? Am I right? Well actually no! Over 50 Thousand Australian children are doing something called upcycling which is where for example you take a toothpaste tube and make it into something else like a bag. Upcycling is actually nothing like recycling.  Upcycling focuses more on using the actual material to make something but recycling focuses more on breaking things down and using the material again.  Also upcycling uses things you would usually not recycle. I think that upcycling is a very good idea and if you have a little bit of spare time why not try it? You might like it and its good for the environment.So do you think that we should keep uncycling? Instead of throwing things in the trash, we should definitely upcycle.

From Joe:

Recycling has been around for ever but have you heard of the great thing called “Upcycling”?

There is so much rubbish in the world that we will not have enough space for it on earth so let’s Upcycle.

We must Upcycle to save the earth and the people on it or we could be living on smelly tonnes of rubbish when we are older.Upcycling is so easy because you can make so many things out of waste.

Upcycling is when you use the materials that can’t be recycled like toothpaste tubes and candy wrappers. It is absolutely disgraceful if you are wasting these resources that we can upcycle.

It seems to be that not lots of people know about upcycling and we are often only told about recycling and sometimes try recycling things that we can upcycle.

This should be something that everyone does in their day to day life.You should start that trend.

This is possibly one of the world’s biggest problems today and maybe even the worst so you must start doing this to save the world as we know it.So save the world and start a trend so that you can make a difference.Do this please!

CLEAN UP AUSTRALIA DAY

What an important day it was with the whole school cleaning up for Clean Up Australia Day! It was so exciting because the Environment Team ( that my friend and I are on) go around with one class each, helping the clean up with small rubbish bags. Happily, NONE of the bags were full so that means we're a very environmentally aware school! Please tell us what you did for clean up Australia day!
Alex and Kitty.

EARTH HOUR - ARE YOU ON BOARD?

http://www.earthhour.org/earth-hour-around-world

MELBOURNE ZOO - a response

The students were asked to respond, in any way, to the wonderfully educational visit to Melbourne Zoo. Read Jess' response!

IDEAS SHARED ARE THE BEST IDEAS OF ALL!

Through our classs twitter account, we received this great link from another Melbourne class studying the same environmental issues as us! Establish your environmental footprint and much, much more!


http://www.wwf.org.au/our_work/people_and_the_environment/human_footprint/footprint_calculator/

CAN YOU HELP US WITH SOME ACTIONS?

What responsibility do we have to ensure that, in Australia, people and animals live in harmony?

This has been the guiding question for our study of endangered animals in Australia.

Our journey began with a visit to HEALESVILLE SANCTUARY east of Melbourne (photos courtesy of Healesville Sanctuary).

Now we are asking for your ideas for actions that we, as 8-10 year olds, can take to address this issue!

Celebrating Reading, Writing and Thinking!

Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks's latest collaboration, "The Dream of the Thylacine," has linked beautifully with the Middles' current inquiry  "Endangered Animals" and inspired our young writers.

C. O'Malley writes:

The front cover seems to be showing the thylacine in pain, roaring at what it once dominated. The description of the cage makes it sounds really horrible and I instinctively feel sorry for the thylacine. Did it have to go through so much pain? I believe this is a true story.

"The Dream of the Thylacine" shows the comparison between captivity and the wild, where the thylacine belongs. The dull colours show sadness and the bright illustrations, show happiness. The last illustration shows that the thylacine belongs with the wild land and   dreams with it. When the thylacine died, the land took it home...where it longed to be....where it was happy. The thylacine deserved a much better life!

N.Kinsella writes:
I think the language was really effective in "The Dream of the Thylacine." I felt like I was part of the story.The illustrations were amazing and really caught my attention. I loved the way Ron Brooks used real images of the last thylacine and his own drawings as well. The story tells how, back then, they had really bad zoo enclosures with cold floors and cement.

C. Brennan writes:
I liked the story, mainly because of the way the illustrator juxtaposed the dark and colourful illustrations.I loved the way the author used the language which had a big impact on me. From what the author wrote, I could easily tell the story was coming from the thylacine's point of view. Just as this book was great to listen to, it also challenged me to think deeply and it had an emotional effect on me. It makes me sad to think how on earth we could be so harmful to the animals a long time ago. But yet I feel happy because of the change of heart we have had and now I hope all animals are safe.