Cleaning up the beach
- how they affect the beach and sea,
- how they affect plants and animals
- how they affect people
| Y6 (05/2006) | |||
| a) |
 |
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| b) |
i)
ii)
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Any choice marked correct Most answers can be considered correct unless:
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n/a
easy
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| c) |
i)
ii)
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Any choice marked correct Most answers can be considered correct unless:
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moderate
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Based on a representative sample of 185 Year 6 students in May 2006
NOTES
This resource was trialled in two different ways:
- Working in pairs: 8 Y5 and Y6 students from diverse backgrounds in a low decile school.. The resource trialled did not form part of their usual programme.
- Individual assessment: The resource was also adapted to an independent pen and paper assessment and trialled nationally by 185 Year 6 students. This provided information about the level of difficulty.
Classroom trial
This task generated a lot of discussion although eventually most cards were placed correctly. Three out of 4 pairs correctly identified the effects of litter on people and on plants and animals. Two out of the 4 groups made errors in regard to the effect of litter on the beach and sea.
In the question section all pairs identified dead fish as the type of rubbish they would leave. Three pairs reasoned that dead fish did little harm to the environment and was actually helpful in some ways, e.g. providing food for other animals. One pair said the only negative thing about dead fish was that it released nutrients in to the environment ( a misconception about what nutrients were). One pair reasoned they would leave the dead fish because they might get germs if they picked it up.
Two pairs identified oil as the most harmful sort of rubbish, giving the potential for it to spread and affect sea life as the reasons. Another pair identified plastic and identified the reasons from the chart. The fourth pair could not come to consensus. One student said oil but could not give a reason, the other said baked bean tin because you could get cut by it. (This was the pair that would leave dead fish because you might get germs.)
National trial
| b) i) |
What rubbish did they choose as most important to clean up?
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| b) ii) |
Correct responses were sorted into categories.
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| c) i) |
What rubbish did they choose to leave?
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| c) ii) |
Correct responses were sorted into categories.
Some students had trouble answering Question c)i) and ii). Instead of saying what they would choose to leave they identified the three they would take away and their reasons for doing so. One of the reasons for this may be that, to reach a decision they are going through a process of elimination, but they are not taking their thinking to the next step of justifying why they would leave an item.
Making decisions about passive actions – what you don’t do as opposed to what you do – is an important science idea to develop related to both the Participating and
Contributing and Thinking Key Competencies as well as the Participating and Contributing strand (Nature of Science) in science. |
- give them a range of other things to consider how they are impacted, including plants and small animals such as shell fish.
- ask them to think about no effect (e.g. plastic probably won’t have any impact on a lot of sea life) and positive impacts (e.g. the tin may provide shelter for some small animals).
This task concentrates on immediate effects. The next step is thinking about how a change to one part of the environment impacts on everything else in that environment. An oil spill is a good example of a change that can have devastating and long-lasting effects.
Read more about Systems level thinking
Once students have identified immediate impacts, begin to focus on:
- The ripple effect on both the living and non-living components of the environment. They may enjoy presenting this information as a flow chart.
- Long term impacts. Compare how an environment as a complete system copes with a small oil spill, compared with its ability to do so with a large oil spill.
- Compare how biodegradable the items of rubbish are, and how this is linked to long-term impacts.
If students are concerned about the dead fish polluting the water:
- investigate its place in the food chain.
- discuss the idea that when animals and plants rot they release essential nutrients (not food) into the environment.
- compare the ability of the system to cope with fish dying naturally as opposed to some traumatic event when a large number of fish die.
If students cannot select and justify what rubbish they would leave, give them practise in breaking down their thinking into steps:
- identifying both the negative and positive impacts of leaving;
- rating the severity to the environment of each;
- justifying the decision of which to leave using information from the above steps.