DLaB reflection from Denmark
For day 1 we had to make a vertical garden. To engage the pupils, we started with a discussion on what being a changemaker meant to them. To help them we showed a funny little animation which got them thinking about trash in nature. From here, the pupils themselves started talking about other subjects like clothing and pollution. As we wanted to work with food, we had to ask them to think about their home life, which made them think about food waste.
We showed them a video about vertical farming and told them that we had to make our own vertical garden with herbs. This excited the pupils as we, prior to the day, had asked them to bring plastic bottles and they wanted to know what they were for.
Halfway through we had a video-chat with the Belgian class. The pupils looked forward to this but were unsure as to what they would talk about so the class prepared some topics beforehand and really enjoyed the chat.
The day started in one room and then moved to three other rooms before we found a fourth room we could use. This added a lot of stress for the pupils and made it difficult for them to focus and since we had to move everything – including all materials and backpacks and such – it made it hard to work.
When the pupils made their personal garden, they proceeded to overwater it because “it looks so awesome” when the water went through. This unfortunately resulted in most of the gardens dying shortly after.
On day 2 the pupils had to write recipes that could help reduce food waste – bearing in mind what food groups produce a lot of waste and what they experience at home. To write recipes is a genre of its own so the pupils got a short introduction to the genre and looked in cookbooks.
Day 3 was postponed we had only had a few hours to cook the food and eat. The pupils loved cooking but should have been properly instructed in reading and understanding the whole recipe before they started cooking. Because of the lack of time, we did not get any reflections from the pupils.