Inverness Education Centre/Academy is pumped for Earth Day!

Ms MacDonald’s Grades 5/6 class at Inverness Education Centre/Academy is pumped for Earth Day! These students know about climate change and they have some ideas about how they can reduce their ecological footprint. The class is excited to put their knowledge to action. During the week leading up to Earth Day (April 22), they will perform one new action for each day of the week. The plan is that each action will develop into a habit that they will practice every day of the year, not just on Earth Day. Ms MacDonald’s class brainstormed a list of five actions they could do. This is the action plan they created:

Monday: Lights out. The class will try to keep the classroom lights off for the whole day. They will open the blinds on the large windows, and let sunlight do the work.

Tuesday: Make Earth Day posters out of recycled materials. This was a great suggestion by one of the Grade 6 students. What a great way to promote what they are doing to the rest of the school!

Wednesday: Litterless Lunch. Litterless lunches include items packed in reusable containers instead of individual plastic wrappers. Although some students pack their own lunches, nearly all students depend on an adult to purchase the food for their lunches. We had a discussion about how it’s important to talk to the adults in their household to explain a litterless lunch, and to offer to help pick out foods at the grocery store that have less waste.

Thursday: Garbage pick-up at recess. Every spring this school does a community clean-up around the town of Inverness. Even so, there’s still lots of garbage around the school yard. During recess, these grade 5/6 students are going to scour the playground for any stray garbage and make sure everything finds its way to the garbage can.

Friday: Wear green and… the students had lots of other great ideas, so we left this one blank to give them some time to think about how they wanted to end their week. Some other ideas include powering down electronics in the classroom at the end of the day, doing an outdoor lesson for one of their classes, and using a reusable water bottle.

We can’t wait to see how their Earth Week events turn out!

~Shandel Brown

Engagement Officer, Cape Breton