Environment Lessons

For the past two weeks I have focused my English teaching on environmental topics. In examining the different things I could do to make more of an impact here, I felt one of the most effective and realistic in the time I had was to help teach the kids about important aspects of the environment and their connection to it, and to help instill a curiosity, awareness and love for nature!

Even though I had lots more ideas, I was able to carry out 4 topics with the various classes - Sanitation around the home, Planting Seeds, Human Impact, and Garbage - reduce, reuse, recycle!

Sanitation around the home

For this class I wanted to emphasize the importance of keeping a clean home - and why. The why part was tricky with the language barrier, but we were able to tease out the relationship between a dirty house and getting sick because of vermin, bacteria, etc. We started with learning some vocabulary about key features in your home - I put an emphasis on learning where your clean water comes from and where the dirty water goes. Although, many people rely on bottled water for their drinking water, so the connection is not quite so dramatic for thinking about where your fresh water comes from.

In the picture below, you can see them drawing a 'perfect' home together, including the features we learned in the vocab. Then we took a walk around and noted 5 different things that make a house dirty - including garbage, waste food, insects, the bathroom, wastewater, animals, etc. - and we added these to the drawing on the whiteboard. We then learned some action words related to cleaning the home - aka, how to remedy the reasons why the house gets dirty, which are often unavoidable! For example, "clean the bathroom", "remove the garbage", "boil the water", "cover the food", etc. We added some energy at this point by playing some charades with these words.

Next we did an activity on hand-washing where we made cut-outs of our own hands, and drew in all the details (wrinkles and lines and nails).

Then we did a quick brainstorming activity discussing how we use our hands, how we get them dirty, and when we should wash them.


I bought the girls bars of soap, but to 'win' them, we played a game of 'hang-man' with our vocab from the day. They really enjoyed this and thought it was funny that I had so many bars of soap! Below is a picture with the girls, their hands and their soap!
I think this lesson was a bit challenging because i tried to cover a lot - environment, health, and what seemed like a lesson on housekeeping! But over my time here I've learned some energizer games that help keep it varied and interesting for them!

Human Impact

This lesson was focused on trying to make the connection between human activities and the environment. We learned some vocab on nature (animals, plants, life, nature, environment,mountain, forest, etc.) and human activities (human, agriculture, fishing, conservation, garbage, deforestation, building, city, village, etc.) as well as some descriptors like healthy/unhealthy, clean/dirty, pollution, green, etc.

We did a Venn Diagram about rural and urban, and which words fit under which category, or both. Then did a drawing of the earth in three different time periods:

1 - Before humans, 2 - present time, 3 - in the future.

I was trying to help them think critically about the relationship between nature and people, and would the future have people co-existing with nature? Would we destroy ourselves? Pushing for questions, like how can we improve from our current situation? I think it was a bit advanced for them, especially with the language barrier! but they like drawing, so that was still fun!

Below you can see my example:) Note the solar cells, wind mills, green buildings, urban agriculture and public transportation and bikes in the future drawing!

Planting Seeds

Planting seeds was lots of fun and something that I was able to do with all the different groups. We planted long green beans and soy beans.

With this group, we also use recycled bottles for our container.
Composting is something that WHH has been quite active in, so the girls were somewhat familiar with it. We added soil and compost, then our seeds, and crossed our fingers! I was worried they wouldn't grow, but everyone's (save a few) popped out after 3 days! phew!
After planting we talked about what plants need to grow and live, and why we need plants! This helped emphasize the many functions of plants.

Garbage - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

The last lesson we did for our Environment Lessons was on Garbage, and it when really well! Garbage is a big problem in this area, as there is not a formal waste management program. People primarily burn their garbage daily, and waste-pickers collect recyclables for money.

I am of the opinion that the approach to waste management in most of the world is very inadequate and if we don't improve we will end up in a situation similar to the movie Wally. Its not even a question of what we do with our garbage (because all options create pollution), but how to avoid creating it in the first place. This may have been lost in translation....but there still are better and worse ways of dealing with it so I tried to provoke some thinking around this.

First we learned the different materials that make-up garbage (plastic - bags and bottles, paper, metal, organic, wood, and mixed). Then we made a chart and walked around the neighbourhood to tally the different types of garbage we saw around (on the ground, and in waste piles). We discussed what we saw when we returned, and created a graph to emphasize which was the highest (plastic, surprise surprise). I think this was good too to help them see the garbage that is all around them that they may have just become accustomed too, but shouldn't!

Then we learned/discussed the options for what to do with garbage. I emphasized the reduce, reuse, recycle, then compost, burn, bury, and do nothing options. We discussed which of the different materials in garbage could be dealt with in various ways. Below is a picture of Rita explaining to the girls about "biopori holes" that can be used to both compost organics and help retain and replenish ground water. I need to investigate this more, as its a very interesting practice that has become famous in Indonesia.


With one group, we were able to learn the words:

good, better, and best

and

bad, worse, and worst.

This enabled us to have a more true discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of the different approaches to garbage management...again, with the limitation of the language barrier!

We all agreed that doing nothing was the worst!

Finally, we learned a great song that my mom told me about, thanks mom! That was the grand finale, and a big hit! Songs are a really great way to learn, and the kids really remember them.

This is to the tune of the 'itsy bitsy spider':

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, words that we all know.

We have to save our planet, so we can live and grow.

We might be only children, but we'll try you'll see

And we can save this planet, it starts with you and me!

Overall, the lessons went well! Some stuff might have stuck with some kids, but thats all you can really ask for in any environmental class, let alone one in a second language. I congratulate the girls on bearing with me and sticking with it as I was pushing them further in terms of critical thinking and to the edges of their language abilities. They did amazing! If they can be that dedicated to learning English, I think there is hope that this generation can be as dedicated to other great things...like saving their environment!