How inspired are your students to engage in future sustainability action?
How effective were the components of this kit?
Please provide 2+ examples of student voice on the kit's impact on them
Something we have learnt is: - That it is important to keep rubbish out of the sea. - How to sort rubbish into categories. - This learning was about saving the sea life; saving the animals; picking up rubbish; and saving the earth! - We need to keep the sea rubbish free. - There's so much plastic in the world. - Wonderings by some of the students included: Who invented plastic? Why is plastic use increasing?How long doea it take for a piece of rubbish to dis-integrate? - What happens to an animal/fish, when it dies?
Which kit components were the most impactful and why?
The gloves were fantastic, because they were child size and nice and thick. Having the printing on the back of 'We keep the sea rubbish free' was engaging, and also helpful for re-pairing the gloves after they had been washed.
How many bags of rubbish did your class collect?
It was hard to get an overall total for "bags of rubbish" as we had several different groups and collected a number of half-full-ish bags. We did two rubbish collections - in different places (one around our school - walking the streets to one of our local parks, picking up rubbish on the way, and also at the park, exploring one of our 3 local streams, and then continuing to pick up rubbish as we walked back to school on different streets. This action collected 757 pieces of rubbish! This blew both us teachers and adult helpers, and the students away as it didn't feel like that much rubbish in the bags, weightwise etc. We then did another trip - bussed into town to an area near our main awa in Nelson - Maitai (or originally called the Mahitahi River), we explored that and did a rubbish pick up along side one side of that, before bussing to Tahunanui Beach for lunch/play and another rubbish pick up on the grassy area before the beach. This trip resulted in 677 pieces of rubbish, so combined we had 1,434 pieces of rubbish.
How has this kit impacted your class culture toward whenua ora (land wellness) and sustainability?
It has heightened their awareness further, and also got some of them thinking about human nature and wondering WHY people litter, or fail to pick things up when it happens. They have also started to wonder about recycling more, and what they could do to help with this.
What is the legacy this kit will leave behind on your learners?
I feel that they are more likely to ensure that they are responsible in terms of dealing with their rubbish, and I know some were having discussions at home with their whānau about their learning and what actions they could take, individually and as a whānau - both at home and at school, to help tackle it.
How high was student engagement throughout this kit?
What was the latitude and longitude of your clean up? (from Sea Cleaners poster)
Local walk - Lat -41.32247032256194, long 173.23272658721243. Second trip into town - Lat -41.266639 and long 173.280385
What was your cleanup location type?
Creek, Green Space, Reserve, Park, School, River, Beach, Other
Which of the following types did your class collect?
Plastic Bag, Plastic Bottles, Food Wrappers, Straws, Household Waste, Tin Cans, Toys
What was the most interesting piece of rubbish found and why?
Hard to say - depends on what you think is 'interesting'... The students were very interested in the cigarette butts - there were SO many of them from the town clean up site (on a walk up along side the river, near an entertainment venue). They were also too light to register on the scales individually so we ended up weighing them all and then taking an average weight once they were counted. Interestingly, we had very few plastic straws picked up, but certainly some cardboard ones. There were also a lot of food wrappers, and we had valuable discussions about individual wrapping, and what they could do to reduce this - buy in bulk and use re-usable containers.
