Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) will be hosting the 2015 First Lego league (FLL) challenge on the 23rd of October. The theme of the Expo/Challenge will be Trash Trek and in conjunction with EP WASTE MANAGEMENT’s expertise in the waste and recycling field, it is foreseen to be a no to miss event.
EP WASTE MANAGEMENT is an integral part of educating/coaching all the schools in accordance with the theme.
EP WASTE MANAGEMENT has visited many schools in various areas and will continue to help the youth of the Eastern Cape to give it their best for the International expo to follow.
EP WASTE MANAGEMENT has even gone as far as taking the under privilege schools who cannot research due to a lack of technology, to The Reclamation group depot. At this depot the students from young and old were educated in the recycling process and what the different recycling materials are.
Holding a plastic bag, nine-year-old Steven stands on his tip toes and reads the decomposition chart, “10 to 20 years!” He looks at the common piece of trash in his hands and shakes his head. “That’s disgusting! And look, 450 to 500 years for a plastic bottle! I’m never drinking bottled water again.” As the fourth grade class picks up newspapers, aluminium cans and a Styrofoam cup from the display area, the students eagerly look up to find out the life span of each item they hold.
The field trip to The Reclamation group depot in Port Elizabeth not only provides a visual and olfactory lesson in trash and the environment.They see firsthand what the damage can be and, most importantly, learns how they can be part of the solution through recycling. Shouts of “reduce, reuse and recycle” can be heard from the students. EP WASTE MANAGEMENT, who hosted this field trip, was very excited to see the enthusiasm from the students. Cardboard, Plastic, paper and metals all got recycled into new reusable materials.
Across the nation, field trips are being eliminated from school district’s budgets. Teachers are restricted by the pressures from districts to show curricular results and to cover content in classrooms leaving little time for out-of-school excursions. The logistics of test schedules, finding a substitute teacher, bus and fuel costs, and balancing curriculum needs with hands-on activities often leaves teachers overwhelmed. Field trips are often viewed as “fluff” or extra-curricular activities and, therefore, are easy line items to cut.
However, teachers and students advocate — and studies indicate — that field trips are a key component of school instruction; they broaden the educational experience and make a subject more relevant. Students might be good at reciting and remembering things, but they often don’t make the connection unless they experience it firsthand. Field trips connect the dots for students by providing real experiences related to all content areas. Field trips enrich and expand the curriculum, strengthen observation skills by immersing children into sensory activities, increase children’s knowledge in a particular subject area and expand children’s awareness of their own community. And everyone you speak with has a field trip memory.
What makes a field trip good? Think of the excursion as a field study, not a field trip. It is a learning experience or experiential learning. A focus on arts integration and project-based learning teaches students to explore real-world problems and challenges. Active and engaged learning inspires students to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they are studying and allows them to see how ideas are connected. Teaching in such a contextual manner promotes collaboration, critical thinking and knowledge retention.
Often teachers look to the arts and cultural organizations of their community for field trip ideas: museums, zoos, science centers and natural areas. Performing arts bring the page to the stage and can also offer a lesson in theater etiquette. In addition to the traditional venues, teachers may choose sites for real world experiences to encourage students to apply what they’ve learned to something relevant in their life.
For example, children visiting a construction site can return to the classroom and design their own homes, businesses and other architectural structures. Visiting a college or university campus introduces the dream of higher education; college students can act as the tour guides, show dorm rooms, cafeteria and study halls, while providing mentorship to the younger student.
The best field trips can bring two seemingly unrelated worlds together. Children from large cities may not understand a math equation about livestock, crops and the other staples of the rural experience because the students focus on the vocabulary, get confused and skip the question. Students in a rural community are often ignorant of urban and suburban terminology. Subway stops, fares, escalators— these oft-used terms placed in a math test question can block the main idea and prevent a student from answering. Sometimes state exams include questions that do not bridge the gap between rural and urban students.
A well-designed field trip can bring it all together: combine two or more subjects while offering a variety of learning styles and intelligence’s, integrate the arts, encourage low-income and English language learner students to make connections between community resources and opportunities and their family and culture. This experience allows all participating students to achieve a higher academic performance in all subject areas.
EP WASTE MANAGEMENT believes in educating our future leaders and innovators so that they can in turn use the knowledge obtained to educate their home environment and use it in our future.