The Bahamas

Virtual Coral Reef Field Trip

Coral reefs play an important role in our tourism and fishing industries, providing food, recreation and shoreline protection for us all. Many important medicines have been found from creatures that live on coral reefs. The BREEF Virtual Coral Reef Field Trip (VCRFT) toolkit includes a 25-min short film with interactive extras, an educator’s guide and the ‘Life on the Bahamian Coral Reef’ poster. The VCRFT is an important learning resource, developed by BREEF with funding from the Atlantis Blue Project Foundation. It is designed for use in Bahamian schools because there can be challenges with taking students on an actual coral reef field trip.

This tool kit exposes students to some of the wonders of the Bahamian coral reef without them ever leaving their classrooms or homes. It also lays the groundwork for further field studies on coral reefs and other ecosystems.

Through use of the tools provided in this kit, students develop their scientific processing skills and gain an appreciation for the need for conservation of coral reefs both locally and globally. It provides an enriching and engaging classroom experience for students learning about coral reef ecosystems.

Find all the resources here.

USA

National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has developed a new Eco-Schools at Home landing page for USA. The page includes five Eco-Schools at Home modules which allow teachers, caregivers, or parents to work with their children, as they travel through a series of activities that allow them to assess a topic of sustainability and take action. The materials can be adapted to better serve other national contexts.

India

Eco Schools Waste Management Programme

The Eco Schools programme of the Foundation for Environment Education (FEE) is being offered in India since 2014-15 by the Centre for Environment Education (CEE) to students from the primary school level, for classes 1-5 (6-11 years old). Looking at the demand of the programme for introducing it to the middle school level, the Eco schools programme is being introduced in India at pilot level to students in the middle school i.e. class 6 to 8, beginning with the core theme of 'Waste Management'. The Eco schools Waste Management Programme (EcoWaM) was launched in India in April 2020 beginning with the core theme of Waste Management. The aim of the initiative is to involve middle school students across the country to create leaders, having the awareness, knowledge, commitment and potential to meet the challenges of waste management in their spheres of influence.

The EcoWaM is a novel initiative of CEE (Centre for Environment Education) with Bestseller Foundation, FEE (Foundation for Environmental Education). The EcoWaM follows behavior change education pedagogy where the students go through the process of Explore, Discover, Think, Act and Share. Under the core theme of 'Waste', it focuses on five sub themes namely Waste and Nature, Waste - A Problem, Waste and Sustainability, Waste Management, Waste and Handprint. A teacher's module has been developed as a resource guide for school teachers to help them in planning and implementing seven steps methodology for becoming a 'Waste Wise Eco Schools'. Looking at Covid 19 pandemic situation, the programme has been adopted to be conducted by schools through online mode. Online teachers training are being planned under the programme where teachers will be guided to implement seven steps methodology with a team of students at home with the help of their parents.

Ghana

In my village Mognori, in the Northern Region of Ghana, is a Junior High School 2nd grade student who schools in a 14 km nearby village called Murugu. Tawfic, as he is called, learned to use his father's sewing machine and tried making mask with his old unused clothes and I got impressed.

I thought it wise to help in my own way based on the president's directive in the compulsory wearing of mask, so I secured a very nice cotton cloth for him.

He made 50 masks out of it. And with him, I donated them to students in the community especially the final year Senior High School Students and Junior High School Student. Finally, I explained how to keep the mask safe for use with them.  

Written by Musah Yousif

Montenegro

Showing great responsibility for the environment and raising awareness of its preservance has become tradition in Primary school „Radoje Cizmovic“ in Niksic. Although not attending regular classes due to Corona virus pandemic, students of this school, with both their parents and teachers' help, accomplished all the below extra-curricular activities successfully.

• Young ecologists participated in an experiment called „The greenhouse effect“ and did a lot of recycling by making new objects out of the used ones. 

• Young Eco Reporters celebrated Earth Day by doing a project called „My planet in a single photo“. The PowerPoint presentation showing all the beauties of nature students captured has been published on YRE Hub.  

• Third grade students took part in the activities of an integrated day on the following topic: “Let's combine health and knowledge-Healthy food”. By combining the contents of different subjects, students made delicious fruit salad on their own; measured a half, a quarter, a fifth..., learned about the nutrition pyramid and did some gymnastics in nature.

• Students celebrated the ENO Tree Planting Day – May 20 by planting different plants.

Students also celebrated World Day of Bees on May 20:

• Grade I: through integrated learning, students combined contents of different subjects: they read stories, wrote verses, planted flowers, acquired some basic knowledge about bees, did a quiz, sang, made drawings, watched „Maja the bee“ cartoons, and prepared different honey treats.

• Grade II - IX; students showed the importance of bees by beautiful drawings, literary works, posters, presentations, and videos. Together with their parents, they prepared honey breakfast meals and planted flowers, contributing to the preservance and protection of bees and biodiversity.

Students also took part in the competition organised as part of the #YREstayshome campaign. The list of Nominees can be seen here.

The following teachers helped their students with planning and implementing the activities: Vasiljka Caušević, Nevenka Daković, Gordana Deretić, Petkana Petkovski, Dragana Vujović, Vera Miletić, Milica Jelić, Vesna Lalatović, Željko Stanjević, Snežana Knežević, Natalija Rudović, Milena Danilović, Milena Živković and Ismeta Fatić.