News . Best Practices MICROPLASTIC: All the skills covered: Literacy, numeracy, and team worker
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This best practice reports an open schooling initiative about Microplastics. The participants were 52 students from Langdon Academy in London. The goal of this open schooling project was to educate students about the problem of plastic pollution. The students’ task was to imagine they are entering a design competition about microplastics in our oceans. Their challenge was to come up with a way to reduce pollution, using their knowledge of mixtures, and a scientific enquiry skill: choosing an appropriate method for an experiment or for solving a problem. The role of the families was to audit where they use single-use plastics in their home and decide how they could reduce their use. They discussed how easy they think this will be. Scientists were invited to talk about the problems of plastic pollution.
CARE: Excellent! High level of students’ participation. Students were very engaged.
KNOW: Students were in contact with scientist through video link provided
Calculations converting units with guidance from the task sheet
DO: Students with families were involved with the design of filter and reducing the use of plastic and providing suggestions
Findings: Time was an issue as I had to give some of the activities as home learning.
I was ambitious trying to finish in 90 mins
Outcomes: Nicely with all the skills embedded
All the skills covered . Literacy, numeracy , team worker etc
Fifty- five students contributed to the open schooling research questionnaires. All of them mentioned that they would like to do more activities like this one. Most students practiced various skills including discussions and developing a project. They liked to work with the microscopes, doing the practical, and seeing the experiments reactions.
More details of our report: on this link.