5th Graders at Spicewood Elementary Teach About Light Pollution
What an inspiring day it was at Spicewood Elementary’s 5th Grade Exhibition. I had the opportunity to mentor these wonderful 5th grade girls this past spring and help them with their 5th grade exhibition project. For their project, they chose to focus on light pollution.
Spicewood Elementary is an International Baccalaureate school and also a project based learning school. For the 5th grade exhibition, students chose a project that fulfilled one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Ava, Elliebeth and Elly chose to focus on light pollution after hearing me speak about light pollution for their 5th grade ‘Actions Speak’ speaker series this past February.
Their project encompassed several steps. The first was researching their topic. Then they came up with what ‘action’ they wanted to take to communicate to the public about their topic. They chose to write a letter to Mayor Adler to make him aware about the harmful effects of light pollution. For exhibition day, they prepared a short introduction to light pollution video for kids to watch as they walked up to their exhibit. They also made a night sky environment out of a cardboard box that kids crawled into after they watched the introduction video. The box inside mimicked a downtown, night time environment and included a city scape they drew, origami bats and little LED lights on the ceiling to represent stars. After one minute, they turned on a bright light so kids could experience the effects of light pollution on their night time environment.
Over 200 kids experienced their Light Pollution Box that day!
Needless to say, I am inspired by what the younger generations will create and how they will help to solve the problems of today. They are already making a ripple in the pond as the Hill Country Alliance Dark Skies Program Manager brought their exhibit to the Uvalde STEAM Expo this year. Good work girls!