Saving the Oceans

Our journey started back in May when we began an inquiry around our environment - linking with the fact that due to the Covid pandemic, people talked about better ways to do things.
We brainstormed ideas about how we thought we could take better care of ourselves and our planet. Here’s what we came up with:

-Get enough sleep

-Walk, scooter, bike instead of drive

-Stop Pollution

-Save water

-Drink more water

-Exercise

-Time

-Respect animals

-Pick up rubbish

-Reduce, reuse, recycle

-Reduce the use of plastics

On Friday 5th June it was World Environment Day and the theme was ‘Celebrate Biodiversity’. This intrigued us, so we investigated what Biodiversity was all about through watching videos. We discussed the affects that plants and animals have on humans as well as the way in which humans can affect plants and animals. We realised that there were both positive and negative affects, but the negative ones were mostly coming from us humans!

This took us down the route of litter and how it can affect the environment. We began by investigating the oceans - looking at images and videos of litter/pollution and our oceans, discussing the ways in which we are causing harm to all life in the oceans and this in turn is having an affect on us as humans (we even touched on things like micro plastics that are found within fish that we can consume!). We talked about how we felt about this predicament and the ways in which we thought we could reduce the amount of litter/pollution in our oceans.

As part of this, I then decided it would be perfect to create my own non- fiction text for some Storytelling (this is in the photos in Drive - it’s about Lobstodiles which I just completely made up!- we continued with this for quite some time as it linked in really well and was super useful for us to create our own non-fiction texts.

Our next step was to do some hands on investigating by visiting Sumner Beach. We were fortunate enough to take part in a Learning through Action programme run by CCC called ‘On the Rocks’. This involved exploring the biodiversity of the rocky shore and tidal zones, and thinking about how we can help sustain these natural spaces.

Following on from this back at school we were involved in a STEM session which linked with our learning around the tidal zones. Koru 4 created their own ‘tidal zones’ with sand, shells, rocks & other materials. We also created ‘living things’ using modelling clay.

It was quickly coming up to Digi Awards time, so we thought we would have a go at creating our own movies with a message around saving the oceans. We investigated Stop Motion using characters that we made out of modelling clay as well as making green screens in order to create an ‘ocean’ background. Some of us added voice overs for the characters, and text for the title and final message that we wanted our audiences to take home.