Bengal Tigers - Seal of Approval Awarded!

This week, despite hurricanes, we had another hangout with Taiwan...our second Bottle Top Art Day and...the Bengal Tigers awarded their seal for the first time ever!  More about that later!

Taiwan Hangout

My class - ready to hangout!

This time, my class, the Bengal Tigers, were presenting to Taiwan.  Children worked SO hard creating scripts and then learning their lines - they LOVE the real context our hangouts provide.  They included many aspects of our Earth Caretakers Project. 

Children's presentations went really well but our second hangout of the week had to be postponed because Taiwan continued to be affected by severe hurricanes.  We were very glad and relieved to hear that everyone is safe in Chong Ming and we've rearranged for next week.  (Video to follow!)
 

Securing the bottle tops to perspex!

Bottle top art (day 2)
We also had our second bottle top art day.  We're likely to need a bit longer before this is completed because the scale is quite big and the process of sticking and then screwing down the bottle tops is taking longer than originally anticipated.  But, as you can see from our pictures, it's really coming along now!

There's been lots of interest and lots of staff and children have helped by bringing in extra browns and golds because we found we were running short of these colours.  Thank you everyone!  Next time, hopefully we'll be able to complete it and put it up in the playground in its permanent home.

Our orangutan is coming along well!

Breaking news....Bengal Tigers' Seal Awarded!
The Bengal Tigers are extremely pleased to report that AT LAST we've heard from a company that actually answered the questions we asked about recycling and the use of sustainable packaging!  And what's more, children were impressed with the answers too!  This feels groundbreaking!

Over the last 12 months pupils have written MANY letters but companies smoothly (or perhaps not so smoothly) have side stepped all our rainforest action teams' questions.

Well done John Lewis!

So....DRUM ROLL....the first company to be awarded the Bengal Tigers' official seal of approval is......JOHN LEWIS!   Well done John Lewis!

On a sadder note, the children were very concerned to read reports that wood fibres from prime rainforest land in Indonesia have been found in the packaging used by KFC.  I know children are keen to write to KFC about this matter!  They've also been listening out for news from the Earth Summit in Rio - mostly though, the feeling is one of disappointment.

Next week we are having the last hangout of the term with Taiwan.  Children will be sharing their Earth Caretakers presentation with more pupils at Chong Ming Elementary.

Our summer camp
We will also be having our summer camp.  In small teams, children will be using Google Forms to collect data about everyone's requests for food, drink and activities.  They will then be analysing the data and making presentations to the class about options chosen.  There's nothing like real life Maths is there!

Pedmore's chickens

I've mentioned before that children are growing lots of their own fruit and vegetables for our camp and we're also hoping to use eggs from Pedmore school's very own chickens!

Minimising the air or freight miles of anything the children need to buy will be a priority too! 

Hopefully the sun will put its hat on for us on Friday....

Orangutans & our bottle top art (day 1)

work in progress

Bottle top art and orangutans
Our keenly anticipated bottle top art day at last arrived on Wednesday!  We all had a fabulous day - even the sun came out!

Before half term children had created some lovely rainforest inspired designs and we settled on a picture showing an orangutan with her baby and in the canopy layer a toucan and macaw.

macaw artwork

Endangered
The orangutan was inspired by our focus on Borneo which, with Sumatra, provides the last two natural habitats on earth for the orangutan.  100 years ago there were 315,000 orangutans - now it is estimated that there are less than 7000 and this beautiful animal may be extinct in the wild by 2015.

The children feel that we may not be able to do much to help, but we should try to do whatever we can.  'Be the change you want to see in the world' - Gandhi

sorting, counting and sizing bottle tops

The children transferred their designs onto card and then from card onto the perspex.  Meanwhile, other groups were busily using Google search to research rainforest tree species so that they could come up with leaf designs for the background.  A further group were counting and colour and size sorting the bottle tops the whole school community has been collecting since September.  There were over 1500!

rainforest leaves

Later, children began the process of sticking these onto the perspex.  Next time they'll be drilling them on so that they'll be really secure!

As our video shows, our bottle top art is a work in progress.  We're hoping to complete it next week and put it up in a leafy, tree filled section of the playground.  Meanwhile children have begun to develop their ideas for a world themed playground.  Watch this space!

  Replies to our rainforest letters

So far children have had two replies to their rainforest letters.  The Animal Savers Team heard from Marks & Spencers in reply to their letter about packaging and the Rainforest Orangutan Team received a reply from Coca Cola about their use of plastic bottles.

Although the Animal Savers are pleased to read of M&S's 'Plan B' both they & the Orangutan team were more than a little disappointed to find that, on close reading of their replies, there were NO responses to their questions.

The M&S reply referred the group to their website for answers so they will be having a look there.  But I think it's fair to say that, teams are already drafting new letters to these companies!


Hangouts with Taiwan
We were delighted to receive another invitation to not just one, but two hangouts with pupils in Taiwan next week.  Towards the end of this week children have been busily scripting their presentations in preparation for our hangouts.  They are going to talk about our Earth Caretakers project.  We'll let you know how these go.

Year 4 Summer Camp

Summer camp planning

In less than a fortnight, the Year 4 Bengal Tigers will be having a summer camp on our school field.  Children plan it in detail and this includes budgeting for food and other things we'll need, menu planning and deciding which games will be played and other activities.  

This year, because children are so focused on 'being the change' they've decided to try to cut out air miles for food bought and better still, they've been working with their families to  GROW THEIR OWN fruit and vegetables.  Fantastic!     

Rainforest survey, videos & bottletop art - fast, furious and fun!

Rainforest Animal Savers Team Action Plan

Progress has been fast and furious this week - needs must as we have sports day, class assembly and assessment week ahead - all of which will impact on time available for our rainforest projects.  So yes, fast, furious and...fun, always, always fun!

Mindmaps
So this week children have discussing and mindmapping ideas for their projects.  After looking around a bit, I found iMindmap.  It's a great little app - the basic version is free though I decided it was worth the £9.99 so that we could, among other things, export the team maps.

Project Action Videos
The mindmaps provided the structure for children's team videos.  Children have had LOTS OF FUN and especially this week with their videos.  Very creative ideas from a planet saving character called Eco Boy (complete with eco costume!) battling a character called Polluto, to an Eco News Desk, jingles and animations - and that was from just one of the teams!

Our rainforest survey on Google forms

Taiwan, El Salvador & a Rainforest Survey with Google Forms!
We've also been exploring Google forms.  Over the last ten days or so, I've heard from Amy, a teacher in Taiwan, about a possible opportunity for our classes to connect.  Amy's school closes for the summer at the end of May, so with the end of the month fast approaching, we have been trying to remove the filtering  obstacles and find a time for our classes to virtually meet! I'm hopeful this will be possible and we're likely to use Google hangout.  But in the meantime, my class & I thought we'd put together a rainforest questionnaire.  Although Amy's class hasn't yet completed the survey,  through the GCT network, Jennifer from El Salvador kindly responded and we now have some survey results from a school in a country with rainforests.  My class are absolutely THRILLED and I hope that this will help children gain a real insight into the local impact of deforestation.   If you're reading this and have a class in a rainforest region, we'd love it if you'd take our survey also! 

Writing to influencers
Pupils have made a good start on their letter writing and I'll update here as these go out & the replies start to come back.  We received a postcard from Survival International this week thanking the children for their work on behalf of the Penan tribe of Borneo.  One rainforest team (the Rainforest Tribe Kidz) have chosen tribes as the focus for their project.  There's a real buzz in class about our projects - and there's an extra boost whenever we connect with others from beyond our classroom walls!

Map
It's also helping us to put all these places on the map!  Children began a rainforest map a couple of months ago.  They've posted information they found using their rainforest cryptonyms.  From the start of Year 4, every pupil in class is known online by their rainforest cryptonym (like Leaf Cutter Ant or Poison Dart Frog)  and we use these at times when we're online eg. when we're map making or using Voicethread.  We've haven't visited in a little while but do take a look if you have a moment!  

So...what's next?

Counting bottletops

So...what's next?  It's assessment week in school so this will affect how much we can do on our projects this week.  I'm still hoping to run a session in class on Google search. I'd also like children to use forms to gather some more information relating to their action projects. 

Creating bottletop designs

We've also collected a mini-mountain of plastic bottle tops with help from the school community.   Luke Perry, an absoluely FANTASTIC artist who has worked with us on two amazing local history/art projects, will be helping us to create a piece of rainforest inspired bottle top artwork for our playground.  Children were busily creating their designs on Friday!