HISTORY OF RECYCLING: OUR ECOFRIENDLY HABITS

Some students from 1st year of ESO have been working throughout the year on a miniproject entitled History of Recycling: our ecofriendly habits for our Smart City Téllez CITE project whose main aim was to produce a digital artefact in the form of an Augmented Reality video using the Storyfab, an AR tool that allows you to create short films using virtual actors on real decors.

In our video, we wanted our students to give a thorough account of recycling habits in today's society and since from the educational point of view, one of the contents included in the curriculum for 1st ESO is the use of Present Simple and adverbs of frequency, the activity suited perfectly well the objectives established in the syllabus. 

We found in Storyfab exactly what we were looking for, so we took on this miniproject with lots of enthusiasm and curiosity. Lots of previous work on the topic was needed and most of it was carried out through seven sessions in total. In each of these sessions, students learnt about different aspects of smart environments, from smart cities and smart homes to different ways of saving energy and recycling. In order to assess what our students' previous knowledge on the topic was, each lesson started with a K.W.L. chart. In other words, a chart in which not only did they become aware of what they already knew about the subject, but also what they wanted to learn and what they actually learnt by the end of the session.

The contents of each sessions are described as follows:

Session 1: What are smart cities?

Students find out from a video what a smart city is and become familiar with specific vocabulary related to the environment ( renewable, efficient, energy, sustainable, green, regenerate, clean, reduce, save, etc).

Session 2: What are smart homes?

This time students find out about smart homes through a videolistening comprehension and take part in an informal discussion about different smart devices especially created for homes such as Google Home or Amazon Echo.

Session 3-4 : Materials

During this session students learnt about different materials (e.g. wood, paper, plastic, glass, etc.) and find out about the importance of the three Rs ( reduce, reuse, recycle) by completing a chart with materials that can be reduced, reused or recycled and by listening to the song The three Rs, by Jack Johnson.

Sessions 5-6: Our very own song about the three Rs.

These two sessions were completely devoted to the writing of a new song about the three Rs. 
We used Pokemon's opening credits theme song to produce a new one based on the original lyrics. 🔊

Session 7: List of sustainable habits.

During our last session we came up with a list of sustainable habits and these were used to produce the script of our short AR film.

Last few sessions were employed to make the filming studio for our video: 

It's rehearsal time at last! Students learnt how to use Storyfab and practice their pronunciation before heading for the real recording studio.

And here's the final result! We hope that you will enjoy watching it as much as we did making it!

Profesora: Cristina Muñoz Rubio

Grupo: 1º ESO