Amelia Walsh, fifth-grade teacher at School Lane Charter School, writes the following about her students’ projects that focused on ways to improve the environment. Amelia and her students were inspired during a Skype session with CanopyMeg while learning the value of forests.
Over the past trimester, the 5th graders of School Lane Charter School in Bensalem, PA learned about environments and how humans impact it both negatively and positively. As a final project, we decided that just learning about the environment wasn’t enough— we needed to do something to make a positive impact on it. The students’ task was to look at the environmental issues in Bensalem and come up with a plan to help fix one of them. They chose their issue by interviewing residents in Bensalem and then came up with an Environmental Action Plan with a group of classmates who were passionate about the same issue such as deforestation, littering, water contamination, and pollution. The students presented their plans to their parents at the exhibition where parents listened to their plans and then voted on the plan that they thought would have the most impact and be the easiest for us to carry out. The top four plans were then presented to a panel of judges made up of members of the community and school as well as an Environmental Protection Specialist. They listened to the four presentations and asked some hard questions! Every single group did an amazing job but the final project that was chosen was to plant trees somewhere in the community! Over the next month, all four classes will be working together to make it happen!
Video of students proposing environmental projects found at buckscountycouriertimes.com
Article about students helping to make Bensalem a better place found at buckscountymag.com
