Schools Clean Up Day: Friday 28th February 2014

We all know students learn better when we can help them to make connections between in school activities and out of school current events. So let’s live greener by participating fully in Clean Up Australia Day.

A free kit with plenty of lesson plans and ideas is available for free at the Clean Up for Schools website.

There is plenty of stimulus for connected maths and science to be found at this site.

Way back in 1991 Johnny and I wrote a book called Counting on a Small Planet.

We were then and still are committed to doing whatever we can to preserve our environment. One section of the book was called ‘What’s in a Lunch Box’ and we have included a segment from it below. We used a real problem solving model with the class who worked over a period of several days on this problem.

What was not included in the book was the fact that this particular class decided to host a no rubbish morning tea for their parents. They discovered that in the ‘old days’ people took their lunch to school or work wrapped in handkerchiefs or tea towels and that workers took their own tea and coffee in a flask with their own cup.

They also discovered that Cornish pasties had sweet at one end and savoury in the middle and that the pastry was its own container. A lot of planning, problem solving and mathematics went into the morning tea. What a great way to raise parent’s awareness and for them to see how passionate their children were about the ‘rubbish’ issue.

With the event happening in February, it's never too early to start thinking about what else we can do to help children gain a better understanding of environmentally friendly practices that also tie in with learning, in particular maths learning.