Category Archives: Global Citizenship

Celebrating Water Dance

We have been investigating global issues relating to water such as wastage.  We have decided as well as taking our   own steps to address the issues faced by the world, we would also raise awareness amongst our peers.

We have been learning about how areas of populations have been built around water sources such as rivers because water is such a valuable resource.  We also found out that many cultures have traditional dances to celebrate water such as the Native Americans. We learned a traditional dance from Israel called  Mayim Mayim which means water water. The dance celebrates the discovery of a stream after a long search for water in the desert.

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As we are participating in a danceathon on Thursday to raise money for Malawi, we decided this would allow us to teach others the dance and raise awareness of  this issue.

We created our own dance celebrating water and the other elements.

We listened to the music and worked together to create simple actions and dance steps to represent the elements. We wanted it to be a group dance to reflect working together and the need for balance. We also designed masks to represent the different elements. The masks helped us get into character and feel even more part of the group.

We hope you enjoy our dance and think about how important water is to us all and the part we all have to play to tackle this global issue.

We are planning to continue to raise awareness, create an action plan   and showcase our learning.

Community- Needs & Wants

We explored what community means to us.  First we compared our community with a community within Morija.

We looked at a map of Barrhead and a map of Morija. We identified features on the maps

James & Ryan's Community
James & Ryan’s Community

and were surprised at how many similarities there were. We discussed how important it was for communities to have certain features such as a school, shops and health centres.

We agreed that communities are more than just a place you live in with a variety of amenities but that it was also a place where people had shared values such as respect and responsibility.

A community is a place people share and respect each other and their area. A community looks after everyone, keeps them safe and happy. Everyone is responsible for their community.  Joseph and Harley

In pairs we then created our own ‘ideal community’ using our mapping skills and based on our discussions. We then discussed the difference between wants and needs. We looked at  a variety of different resources such as water, mobile phones, toys and  classified then as  a need or a want using   a venn diagram.

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We then identified and ranked the most important ‘needs’, we all identified water as being the most important resource humans need to survive.

We are going to be  learning  about water and exploring  issues such as sustainability throughout the term.

Outdoor Learning and Active Maths

We were challenged to ‘walk in the shoes’ of a child from Morija to help us understand the impact water shortages can have upon people.

First we were challenged to collect facts about average water consumption per person within different countries. We had to   walk for a mile to retrieve all the facts. Every time we collected a fact we had to carry another dictionary.

We discussed the activity and the possible reason behind the journey and we realised that the journey was half the distance a child from Moroja has to walk to collect water from the stream. The dictionaries symbolised education and the facts that whilst the child is collecting water they are not in school.

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Although we found the task fun because we were outside and it was active we discussed how hard it would be to do this multiple times a day and how it could affect a child’s health and well being.

 

We were then challenged to use our data handling skills to collate the data and create a graph displaying the results. We were shocked to discover that the average consumption of water in litres within the USA was 595 litres whereas in Ethiopia it was only 5litres. The UK’s rate was also very high.  We discussed how unfair this was and that the over consumption and wastage of water needs to be addressed.sam_1355 sam_1356 sam_1358

Water Usage Survey

This term we have been learning about Global Citizenship and we will be exploring issues related to water.

We completed a water diary at home to identify how much water we use every day. We then calculated how many litres we used   and we were quite surprised at just how much water we use.

We compared our water usage to a child’s from Morija in Africa who only uses 18 litres a day and created a graph to display the information. The comparison graph and diary task really illustrated to us just how much water we use and indeed waste.

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graph-morija

 

We were also shocked to discover that 1 in 10 people don’t have access to clean water.

We used the issue tree to help us apply critical thinking skills to the issue and identify the roots of the problem such as ‘water wastage’, as well as the impact it can have upon others e.g. illness. We identified possible solutions to the problem. As global citizens we identified small steps we can take to address the problem, for example taking shorter showers.

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Jeanie's Issue Tree
Jeanie’s Issue Tree

We have decided to take action and raise awareness of these issues, we are going to produce eco friendly posters to highlight the issue to our peers and we are also considering other actions we can take tackle this problem.

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