We had three suggestions as triggers. You can use one or more of these.

Trigger 1 - What the world eats.

Peter Menzel has an online gallery of families from all around the world. Each family is photographed with the food that they usually eat in a whole week. For each image, there is some accompanying text with background information. This gallery was shown to the students with almost no introduction. The trigger question was: "What do you notice with these images?" The stduetns were given some minutes to just explore the images by themselves. Then we used "Think-pair-share" to facilitate a discussion in the class. Most pupils came up with very interesting observations and questions after about 10 minutes.

You can find the gallery here. Or you can buy the physical book What The World Eats, by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, which contains more information.

Activity 1: Designing and creating using found materials from the city

Develop

A wide range of materials found by students were brought into the classroom for the students to explore and evaluate. These were materials typically available from home such as cardboard, paper, plastics of different types. They were challenged to minimize waste by reusing the materials to make items for the citizens of the city that were useful or attractive, or both. They talked in pairs and groups about what they might design and make.

Deliver

The making stage was student-led, with students independently designing and making their artifacts as teachers responded to questions and requests for advice. It was clear that they were drawing upon their experiences of the previous two days as they worked. They made useful items such as furniture, ways to channel and save water, clothing, lighting and attractive items such as sculpture and art. Throughout they solved problems based around how to cut and join and materials, use tools effectively and work as successful teams. In the e-book below you can see some of the outcomes and hear the students talking about their experience.

The artist Tony Cragg has used found and discarded materials to make art for many years.

Activity 2: How would your floating city handle garbage in the future?

Develop

The pupils explored what issues a floating city in the future would have concerning garbage handling. How can this be solved? This discussion related to the ideas they had come up with in the trigger activities. So this discussion is two-fold: what is the challenge, and what is the solution? There are many different challenges, and many possible solutions to each one, so they should explore many different options.

Deliver

The pupils decided on one challenge and one solution which they thought were best or most interesting. We suggested that they communicated their result with a movie.

To make the movie, we used different type of trash, Lego and Lego figures. The trash should be varied, not messy and cleaned. Suggestions: orange peel, clean plastic bags, news papers, washed metal and glass, cartons, yogurt boxes etc. The Lego is a simple way to help the pupils have a flexible tool to quickly create buildings, vehicles etc. that they need to tell their story.

The movie was made by using an padlet with a simple movie editing app. The type of movie should be simple, or a technique that the pupils are experienced with. We chose to make short film clips using iPads with the iMovie app. The pupils filmed the animation first, then recorded a narrator voice after the filming and editing was done. Recommended film length is maximum 1 minute. You can see some results here:

Activity 3: Bioplast

Discover

It is possible to make biodegradable plastic out of milk. The idea was to show the pupils an alternative solution to non-biodegradable plastic, and possible usages.

We made bioplastic by heating up 200 ml of milk to 55 degrees celcius (use a thermometer) and then adding 20 ml of vinegar.

Develop

We formed the bioplast into wings for the windmills on the houses.

You can discuss other things in the house that can be replaced with bioplast. This activity can help the pupils to be aware of how much plastic we use and how it can be replaced.

We dug a hole in the ground and put in bioplast and normal plastic to see which is decomposed first. This will probably take a few weeks or months, so the after a longer period.

Photos and/or embedded Padlets

For these activities there are opportunities for pupils in different countries to share their products and findings with each other.

These include:

Making the same outcome and comparing across countries:

- comparing a collection of litter and waste from each country following the model of 'What the world eats' (see above)

- tracking the journey of waste through school and beyond

- making timelines of how long it takes materials to decompose and sharing ideas of what to do as a result. Making films and posters giving advice.

Making and sharing:

- designing and making products to upload to a shared area such as a Padlet or etwinning platform to evaluate.

- making short films to demonstrate and explain processes using several languages.