Year 6 Teacher
What made you choose air quality and energy loss as your investigation topics?
Teacher: I got involved in the project and I just expressed an interest in getting more involved with the climate side. The school had to start putting together a sustainability plan and everything, and I just it was something I was more interested in becoming involved with. So our business manager said all these projects come through, would you like to take part? Yeah, I was kind of just intrigued by it. We did two investigations actually. We were looking at air quality and we also looked at energy loss with the thermal cameras.
How did you structure the activities?
Teacher: We use the CO2 monitors to measure the air quality inside. Then the children, we also use the magnifying glasses and the sheets to look for evidence of lichen growing outside. We also borrowed the thermal cameras because we wanted to look where we were losing energy, which I think the children found interesting, but I feel like they focused probably more on the air quality side of it in the end. Before we started the project, the first session we did with the children, we gave them a bit of a background, like what air quality is. And the children selected the areas where we were going to measure the air quality. So they thought about the different parts inside school they wanted to measure and they were already coming up with ideas like, well, it might be worse there because there’s more people in that space or like the dining hall, they said all the doors opening and closing all the time, so actually it might be better there.
What surprised you most?
Teacher: I think I was probably only surprised really at how engaged the children were. Yeah, the core group were just so enthusiastic, and I think I didn’t know if I expect them to be quite as enthusiastic as that. And I think also just the awareness that some of the children already had about climate issues. I think it brings it home, like how actually in younger people, it is already something a lot of them are thinking about, which maybe as an adult, we don’t quite always see that as much.
What have you taken from this experience?
Teacher: We’ve got now a little sustainability team within schools, so I’ve been part of that team, which I’m really pleased about. The air quality stuff was really interesting and we still got a little bit more to do on it actually and the children I worked with were really passionate and they keep nagging me about, can we get this finished? Can we go on to the next part of it? It’s made me definitely more engaged, a lot more thinking about sustainability issues and definitely climate issues. Just some of the results we saw, I would say it’s definitely affected that approach to just making sure windows are open and that airflow is good.
What happens next?
Teacher: The children shared their results with the head teacher. So the plan is they are now going to be doing an assembly for the whole school. And they’ve also come up with ideas that they discussed with the head teacher about things they want to see. They want to make sure windows are open on a regular basis in every classroom. They want to do things like try and get every classroom to have an indoor plant, get more outdoor greenery. Yeah, things like that will be beneficial to the school in the long run. I am planning to apply for additional funding. It’s just in year six we have SATS and lots of other stuff, so I’m just waiting until that’s out of the way because I want some time to really look at all the projects that are already in place, see what other schools have done. I really like the idea of getting more greenery in school and the impact of that. Our researcher, who I worked with on the project, she did express an interest in taking part if we took it further. So hopefully if she was still willing to do that, then I’d have the partner there from the STEM side.