Classroom Exercises
Ollie Recycles CD-Rom Examples
As part of a national pilot WasteWise worked in partnership with Groundwork East and West Durham to support six schools to work with the recently updated Ollie Recycles CD-Rom. The work was funded by Biffa Waste Services which funded Officer time with each school to deliver in class sessions using the CD-Rom to enhance the pupils awareness of waste issues. The CD-Rom is aimed at Key Stage 2 pupils and is a fun interactive way for children to learn about the 3 R's (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle)
The six schools involved were:
West Cornforth Primary School (six pupils from Year 4)
Chilton Primary School (two Year 5 classes)
Timothy Hackworth Primary School (Eco-Club representatives)
Princess Road Primary, Seaham (Year 4)
Please click on the links below to look at examples of the web pages that the children developed at Chilton Junior School and West Cornforth Primary School
West Cornforth Year 4 Examples
Chilton Junior School Year 5 Examples
Worksheets
The Project has produced lot's of different worksheets for use in the classroom. They include:
* How to make recycled paper in the classroom
* The '3R' Files. An exercise to improve childrens knowledge of the 3 R's, (Reduce/Reuse/Recycle)
* Composting made easy
* Animal, Vegetable, Mineral
* Worm Study Sheets
* Can You Tell The Difference. An exercise for pupils to study the differences between aluminium and steel drinks cans.
If you'd like any of these worksheets please e-mail us and we'll send them to you. If we get enough requests we may post them on the website.
School Case Study
Greenland Community Infant School, South Moor, Stanley
The school uses the same yard as the Junior school and a major problem is that of litter. This comes from both the children within the two schools and from people using the yard after school hours. Following a couple of meetings with the Head Steve Moore the WasteWise Officer gave assembly presentations at both the Infant and Junior school's to see what the children thought were the problems in the school. Following on from this both schools ran a competition to come up with a name and logo for their own 'Litter Action Team'.
The Infants School Team became known as the 'Don't be a Litter Bug' Team. John Ridley from Year 2 came up with the name and logo.
The Junior School Team became known as the 'Cool Dudes Litter Team'. Jos Burns from the Juniors designed the winning logo and came up with the name.
The project was supported by Theme Bins International from Newcastle, they produced Baseball Caps and t-shirts with the logo's on for the two winners and for children to wear when litter picking.
A second project with the school involved developing a wormery. The Infant school pupils are only allowed fruit to eat as a snack at morning break and the school wondered if something better could be done with all the leftovers. Mrs Morton's Year 2 were chosen to develop the project. Over a term the children investigated what types of fruit are eaten, whether worms could be used and decomposition itself. Kindly a local company Walker Organics from Leadgate agreed to provide the school with the worms it needed and some expert advice.
Theme Bins International provided a bin for the children to adapt and the children set about investigating what they would have to do to the bin so that it would be a good home for the worms. They decided to turn the bin on it's side because they found out that the worms are surface feeders and therefore like a large surface area to feed from. They also found out that the worms needed a good air supply so included air holes in their design's and learnt that lot's of moisture would be produced so included holes in the bottom of the bin for the runoff so that the worms wouldn't drown. They also included viewing areas on the side using clear perspex because they were fascinated watching the worms eating and moving around.
The wormery is now successfully installed in the school outhouse and is fed with waste fruit approximately twice a week and regularly checked by the children and staff at the school.
Below is one the children's pieces work:
Following the success of the first wormery the next class of year 2 pupils worked with WasteWise to design and build another one. Below is a photo of some of their designs.
Following on from this work the school is now into recycling
paper and cardboard from the school. Pupils help the staff to collect the waste
paper from within school, it is then collected fortnightly by the Acorn Trust
based in Consett. The cardboard is collected by Derwentside District Council.
The school is also about to start recycling textiles as a continued drive to
develop its recycling initiatives.