Trisha Shanks
Arrow Lakes News
Thanks to a fun and potentially rewarding contest, Nakusp Elementary School’s Grade 6 class has taken an interest in the environment and especially in local birds. They have been busy over the winter. Their teacher, Ms. Megan Jamison attended an environmental education conference with the Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network (CBEEN) in October and brought back some ideas the students enthusiastically went to work on. CBEEN’s Wild Voices For Kids (WVFK) is a program geared toward elementary school students. According to the CBEEN website, it is an “environmental and heritage education program that provides students with curriculum-based presentations and field trips by local experts (community educators, or CEs) on the land, history and culture of the Columbia Basin region.”
Once the kids showed such an enthusiastic response to working on environmental projects, Ms. Jamison told them about the BC Green Games (BCGG) contest being held. Classroom projects have a chance to win cameras, workshops and travel subsidies for a free Science World field trip as well as cash prizes to encourage environmental endeavours in schools.
Jamison said, “We discussed things that they were interested in. The students came up with lots of ideas but we had to narrow it down to something we could do in the winter.”
Three projects were decided on: bird feeders from pop bottles, wooden birdhouses and a program to collect and recycle empty milk containers from all of the classrooms. Since they were mostly interested in making new things out of recycled materials, they researched and found designs for feeders and birdhouses. They had Julia Burger, a local wildlife biologist, come in and talk about bird species. Burger talked about what type of food is healthy for them and what type of birdhouses they would be more likely to nest in.
“Prizes tend to motivate people too,” Jamison admitted with a laugh when talking about the gung-ho her class has demonstrated for the project. “They are most keen on winning some money towards a field trip to Science World in Vancouver. All contestants will receive free entry but this would help with money to travel there.”
One of the contest components was documentation — either a video or a power point presentation was required to enter the contest. Jamison is thrilled with the skills her students developed including a long list of skills in addition to learning about the environment and finding uses for recycled materials.
“Regardless of whether they win or not, they have learned so much. Building things with wood and other materials, organization, public speaking. Some of the girls got super keen about taking on the project themselves. They did presentations in each of the classes, made up schedules, and approached all of the teachers. And then making the video — editing, music selection, voiceover work,” Jamison continued.
While the top prizes will be selected by a panel of judges, their three-minute video has been up on the web vying for the highest number of votes to win the wild card “viewer’s choice” award. Winning would see $500 go towards further environmental learning.