Planet Alert! Developing Critical Thinking Skills

1. Planet Alert! Developing Critical Thinking Skills

2. The aim of this project is to contextualise our Internationalising Learning work with eco-awareness and incorporate the development of critical thinking skills–P4C. • During our visit to our link school in India, we decided on a joint recycling scheme in which both schools would make paper bags, with an agreed joint logo, to try and sell in local shops and stores and start to tackle the big problem of plastic bags. • I used my role as eco manager to launch a critical thinking corner in the school’s Recycling Area. This is an ongoing, interactive display which children can write comments. I made a display of a variety of plastic carrier bags from different countries and posed the question “Plastic carrier bags look interesting and can be fun and useful, so why can they make us sad? - find out in next week’s assembly” As the children passed the display they were encouraged by adults to read it and comment. We had many ideas, including suffocation, blowing away and of course the danger to animals. I showed the power point in assembly and we had a discussion about the comments and the PowerPoint itself, noting the different animals, and so understanding that this is a global problem. I had also set up a role play in which children convince their families to reuse, buy a cloth bag and use paper ones. These ideas were generated by the children’s comments - all ideas were discussed, including suffocation. Elaine then showed the paper bag design and talked about how we are going to make our very own bags with the Indian school. So that together we are helping the planet and animals. We have arranged a celebration of world environment day at the end of June. Activities will include paper bag making, making notepads. My colleague has ensured that this is scaffolded into a real whole school, factory-style, with each year group having a role which is ability appropriate - such as reception threading the string and hole-punching, Year one gluing and Year Two folding the bags! • We then followed up P4C training with the staff using the power point as an example. We are now following this up in class, coaching the staff informally in the P4C format. The children are so engaged in the project that they want to write to TESCO and all the supermarkets. We will do this and are planning to set up a meeting with Tesco and our children. The project is ongoing and evolving naturally, with an added South African perspective now. It’s very exciting.