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Thursday, 28 July 2016

How Much Water Do We Use? How Much Water do We Waste?


How much water are we wasting?
Running Water Free Stock Photo ...
Discoveries
We found out that we wast 22 ml of water per minute. It costs $2.24 per cubic metre of water. 950,000 -190-5 days a week for 39 weeks= 25.641025641. Most people use the tap water fountain and can't/won't turn it off. When you leave a tap dripping for 24 hours it will waste 29 litres.
How much water will we probably use this year?
We estimate that this year we will use 950 cubic meters. We may not be using as much as we should be but we don’t know if all this water is being used to its proper usage. Technically we are not using as much as we should, which is 29 - 30 litres for health purposes, such as going to the toilet twice (13 - 13.5 litres a flush ) and drinking 3 litres of water to keep ourselves healthy.
25.9138025095 litres roughly Per student Daily is how much we are using.

Our proposal / recommendation / next steps
  • Fix the drinking fountain tap
  • Try to turn the drinking fountain which has the tap handle off or not use it at all.
  • Don’t wash your hands for longer than a minute.
  • Use grey water for the toilets {grey water is when dirty water from taps or household equipment gets used for toilet flushes}
  • Collect the rainwater
  • Get www.watersaverme for the school

How much do we Use? Statistical Investigation

Statistical Investigation:  How much do we use

At Worser Bay school we have been working on how much we waste as a statistical investigation.
I, Sam  have been working on how much paper we have been wasting we have also found that to make paper you don’t just need trees.

    Preview of your graph

Waste of paper
13 pieces of paper per student every day at Worser Bay School.  Is that too much?                
                        By Meg, Emma R, Molly, Betty, Raiha and Hayley
Earlier last year the office printed off newsletters for each family. There are 188 people in our school and the newsletter had 4 pages so 4x188=752. so we now use technology because that wasted too much paper.
  • We found out that the school orders 200 boxes of paper per year and in each box there is 5 reams of paper. In each realm there is 500 pieces of paper.
  • Adding all those numbers together it is 5x500=2500x200=500,000.
  • We wanted to find out how much paper each child uses everyday per year.
  • There are 188 kids in our school and 200 school days a year.   
  • 500,000 divided by 188=2659 divided by 200=13. So that means we use 13 pieces of paper per student every day at Worser Bay School.  Is that too much?                                                         
  • That is at least 17 trees a year used for only 2 photocopiers.
  • Trees produce oxygen which makes us breath. Trees are a crucial element in the human life form.
  • People need to understand that more than 1 million trees are going to waste just for paper!.
  • There should be a limit of paper to use each day. If we reduce this amount of paper we can make a difference.
  • Usually people print off a piece of paper to read out in assembly and never use that piece of paper again. But we can reduce this amount by just using our books or technology.                         
  • We use 200 boxes each year throughout the whole school. There are 5 reams of paper in each box and 500 pieces of paper in each ream. We found out that there are 500,000 pieces of paper being bought in for the school. We counted how much paper is in all the classes from there work books and there was 26000, 74800 and 76800 paper being used in the classes in books. So 500,000+26000+74800+76800= 677600.
Recommendation
If you usually get a fresh piece of paper STOP because you can just use a scrap or another side of the paper that has been used.                                                                                             
If you draw or write something that you didn’t like or make a mistake don’t just go put it the bin, reuse it.

Encourage your teachers to present more work in digital formats.

Science of sound

As part of our inquiry into music leading into the upcoming music festival in week 5, we have been doing rotations looking into different aspects of sound and music. One of these has focused on how sound works... Sound is made when something moves or vibrates. The movement sets up a sound wave in the surrounding air.

We have been observing slinkies to see some of the properties of sound waves - how they vibrate, how they lose energy as they touch or move through things and how the wave reflects or echos. We've also been looking at how we can hear. Ask one of us if we can tell you how our ears work or which part of our body vibrates when we talk.


Music moves in waves like slinkies from Matariki on Vimeo.



Monday, 25 July 2016

New Road Patrol Roster for July and August

Road Patrol- 2016 (July/August)         
Morning please be on patrol at 8.45am
Afternoon please be on patrol at 2.55pm



Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Morning
Bottom
Emma R
Molly

John
Josie
Louise

Hamish
Chester
Hugo M

John
Jasper
Cody

Chrissy
Chester
Isaac

Scott
Morning
Top
Gemma
Bella

Suz
Alex B
Rory

Nic
Hayley
Lucie

Shona
Elliot
Alex P

Gabrielle
Evie
Charlie

Hamish






Afternoon
Bottom
Lucas
Joel

John
Ben Bl
Angelina

Hamish
Caitlyn V
Evie

Shona
Parker
Perry

Gabrielle
Meg
Raiha

John
Afternoon
Top
Oto
Isaac

Jude
Kaia
Janne

Jude
Blake
Oto

Jude
Sophia
Sylvie

Jude
Sam Sh
Sam St
Jude

Thursday, 7 July 2016

Making a difference - Planting the Dunes

On Tuesday, we headed down to Worser Bay Beach to do some work to protect the sand dunes. A big thanks to Joachim from Te Motu Kairangi (Miramar Ecological Restoration) and Brian Thomas from Wellington City Council for providing us with both plants and their time.

First we noticed there was a need to weed the dunes. While we were doing that, we discovered there was an abundance of snails in the dunes. Joachim also works at Wellington Zoo and said that the tuatara at the zoo love to eat snails. He invited us to capture snails to be taken for the tuatara - this offer was taken up with enthusiasm.

We had a few different types of plants to put into the dunes and in small groups we started to do this. First separating the soil, then taking the plants out of the bags and putting them in the soil and compacting it down. Later in the day small groups helped to plant the area below bottom grass with some small trees.

While all this was going on, there was also a group doing stage one of the ground clearing for the Lizard Garden (this will be the area below the bottom court as you walk up from the Awa Rd clearing). Look out for the working bee next term to finish this off.

Wednesday, 6 July 2016

Plastic Free Peninsula Pizza and Movie night


A message from Miranda Struthers...

July is Plastic Free Month and the Worser Bay School community has launched a ‘Plastic Free Peninsula’ campaign. Students, staff and parents are raising awareness about the plastic problem in the Miramar Peninsula coastal environment and are taking action to address the problem and reduce consumption, both at school and at home.

To kick off the campaign a movie and pizza night was held for the school community, showing short films about plastic consumption, its impact on the natural environment and personal stories about how individuals can make a difference. Students and parents were inspired by the event, and motivated to get involved in the campaign. 

On Sunday 3rd July, International Plastic Bag Free day, the school community held a beach clean-up around the Miramar Peninsula. Over 20 large sacks of rubbish were collected and some interesting items were uncovered including a welding mask, complete fishing rod, sailor’s washing machine and parts of an old washed up suitcase. The students then took the rubbish back to school to complete a waste audit of their findings. Hugo M  said "I'm surprised how much rubbish we found. I'm surprised we didn't see it at first till we looked closely, it was tangled in the bushes and wedged between the rocks". 

The Plastic Free Peninsula campaign will continue beyond July and the students are wishing to share the campaign with other schools, businesses and communities on the Peninsula. More activities are being planned in the months to come.
Raffle Prizes- thank you to Jacky for donating the water tank to the school
It's Plastic Free July Are you ready to take the challenge?


The PFP logo was revealed. Thank you to Hunter T who designed the crab and Catherine Hanham for putting this together. 

These are the movies that we showed at the movie night:

Here is a message for us from Melati and Isabel:



Sunday, 3 July 2016

It's Plastic Free July! PFP do a beach clean up!

It's Plastic Free July! To kickstart this event the Plastic Free Peninsula Group did a beach clean up at Worser Bay Beach... 
    


Message from Sophie Williams...

83 of us collected heaps of rubbish today, about 10 sacks full! 

The weirdest things we found were:
A travel washing machine
A welding helmet
half an old wooden suitcase
A bra
A fishing rod covered in tube worms.

Melissa won the prize for most collected
Edward won for unusual small washing machine
Amanda won for unusual Welding mask
Kaia found the suitcase!

Edward and Vicky tidied around a penguin nest. Edward said: "From the sound of it, you could hear babies - squeaks. There was heaps of rubbish around the nesting box: polystyrene, snack packets and heaps of cups".

Great work! So satisfying.

Thank you to all of the families that participated- a real team effort. Such a great turn-out (and so much rubbish collected!), Plastic Free Peninsula is thinking of holding them quarterly.