Play Date With The Environment
With the rise of the twentieth century, societies across the globe have become more environmentally aware of the importance on sustaining a greener earth than any generation before. However, while this awareness is spreading throughout the adult world it has not really sparked an interest in society’s youth.
In attempt to promote a ‘Greener Earth’, on Wednesday May 19th, 2010, students from the University of Windsor’s Green Corridor project, along with the leadership of Leah Behrens, hosted a field trip for LaSalle Public School’s grade seven class. The class was able to tour the Green Corridor grounds and understand what having a greener earth truly means. They were given many activities to do, including collecting biotic and abiotic components, smelling the air around (for pollution), and analyzing traffic (trucks, cars, etc.) and how it connects to noise pollution or air pollution. Afterwards they were able to choose either a biotic or abiotic sample to look at through an electron microscope to see it up to 200, 000 times magnified.
The students then took their magnified image and incorporated it into a clay-tile art project. They were introduced to the idea of ‘environment’ and soon learned that an environment includes everything around them- living and non living- and not just dealing with recycling, as previously assumed.
Sustainability of the environment helps make the future a better place. Hopefully we can make this sort of field trip spread throughout the district, and with it promote more knowledge about sustaining a greener earth.
Some examples of clay tiles created from magnified images collected from GLIER
Inserting collected samples into the electron microscope at GLIER
