​

Living on an island with clean air, beautiful nature and little pollution makes it difficult for our pupils to understand the reality of the environmental problems the world faces now and in the future. However, there are some indications to there being a problem. The area where pollution can be seen in our local environment is in the sea and on the shore where rubbish from near and far is clogging up our beaches. A governmental initiative to help clean up the shores of the coast of Norway became the inspiration for this project. Where does all this rubbish come from, who is responsible and what can
be done about it were some of the questions the children at our school discussed. The school took part in helping to clean up the shore in our local area, and were shocked at the amount of rubbish that they collected. Also, they were shocked by the reports of a dead whale found in Norway, where scientists found it had died because it had eaten large amounts of plastic. This spurred teachers and pupils to look at videos and articles from around the world about the problems we are facing when it comes to pollution, global warming and other environmental issues. The children of today are the future of tomorrow. Therefore, it is important that they learn about what challenges they will meet, choices they can make for themselves and their families and how they can have an impact on political decisions. The aim of this project is to teach them what environmental problems are, the vocabulary related to the topic, to get an understanding of their own actions, how to take informed
choices in regard to pollution and how to influence political decisions. As one of the focus tasks during a mobility is to have a debate where the pupils will argue their point of view, they will practise their research skills in preparation for the debate, planning skills, and oral skills. They will through this learn about how to argue their point of view, understand that different people have different views on a topic and different views about how a problem can be solved. Another important lesson is for the pupils to understand how one incident in one area, like an oil leak, has implications in a much wider area than just where it happened. In preparing for the application, the science team has been involved, as well as the head master, and the project co-ordinator. Through the learning objectives and learning tasks it is important for the school and the project to get children to think about consequences of own actions, regarding pollution and the environment. How they can take informed decisions and influence others through action and words. Also, by collaborating with other schools, both pupils and teachers will find out if the problems we are facing in the different countries and areas are the same, similar or totally different.