SDG 14_collaboration

The Leys Primary & Kathmandu English School

The issue of plastic pollution is now accepted to be a global issue.
Entanglement and entrapment of marine wildlife; ingestion of plastic by
marine animals; ocean currents causing enormous areas of ‘plastic soup’;
microplastics and food chain contamination are all issues that urgently
need to be tackled.
This collaborative unit of work addressed this issue
in a positive and optimistic way, focussing on the
progress that has already been made in relation to
Sustainable Development Goal #14: Life below water.
Our students explored multiple issues relating to
plastic pollution and learnt about solutions that
exist to overcome it.

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Students were given nine different activity cards and asked to
rank them in the following way:

Students were asked to write down what they thought were the
key words linked to the topic of plastic pollution in our oceans.
They then used these to create ocean-themed word clouds.

Students were asked to choose one item and highlight
its possible journey to ending up in the ocean.
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In 1992, a cargo ship in the
North Pacific lost a shipping
container on its way from
China to the United States that
spilled nearly 29,000 rubber
ducks and other bath toys into
the ocean.
Students were asked to mark
on a world map where the
ducks left from; where the
cargo container fell into the sea
and where the ducks travelled
to before being washed ashore.

Plastic has been found in all the world’s oceans.
Once plastic has found its way into the sea, it is caught up in one
of the Earth’s five major currents, or gyres, and travels vast
distances to the centre of these great whirlpools.
Gyres are formed by the Earth’s rotation
and resulting predominant winds.
The five gyres are found in
the North and South Atlantic,
North and South Pacific
and Indian Ocean.
Students were asked to locate the gyres
on a world map.
Click on image to start short film

Students drew a marine food web and highlighted the transfer
of micro-plastics by drawing them inside each of the marine animals

Fish do not have time to build up their numbers and whole
populations are being wiped out. This causes problems for the whole
community of creatures and plants in that ecosystem, and the
humans who depend on them for food and to make a living.

The following ‘big questions’ were posed to students:
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Finally, our students looked at different ways that people are
approaching the clean-up of the oceans using the four examples below:
• Ocean Clean-Up (large-scale action)
• Sea bins project (local action)
• Plastiki (education)
• Banning microbeads (prevention)

Click on image to start short film

Click on image to start short film

Click on image to start short film

Click on image to start short film

Students at The Leys were challenged to come up with a design of how
to tackle the problem of gathering plastic pollution from our oceans.
They drew their design (making it colourful and visually eye-catching),
labelled the key parts and briefly explained what role each part plays.
Click on image to see student designs

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