Insight into my project work 6.2.4

In an attempt to state the curriculum objectives of the project with specific 21st Century skills and higher-order skills, I have written down the following:

Objectives:

1. Identify aquatic organisms in a water sample. (curriculum)
2. Use sampling and counting techniques to estimate population size. (curriculum)
3. Collaborate in groups to agree, with substantial reasoning, on the most appropriate sampling method to apply for each of the different water samples to be taken.(21st Century skill)
4. Critically examine data on numbers of micro-organisms in the different samples and, considering other environmental factors observed, draw a conclusion about the patterns. (21st Century skill)
5. Create a blog with content compiled by all learners, containing details of the story of the entire project, the observations made and the conclusions/hypothesis deduced.  (higher order thinking)
6. Together influence the community to implement workable solutions which either guarantee the safe use of drinking water that may contain large number of dangerous micro-organisms or the protection of water bodies which are supposed to have large number of useful micro-organisms to guarantee ecological balance.  (higher order thinking)

The learners will engaged by:

• Allowing them select the leadership of their different groups and distribute other roles among themselves.
• Allowing them to define for themselves what outcomes will indicate a successful project.
• Allowing them to totally plan for all the activities in the project which will include obtaining permission from the Local Councils around the school to access these water bodies, outline the different tasks with their time frames, consult resource persons for information which may be a useful guideline in making conclusion of the statistics gathered.
• Making them do the actual sampling of the water and compiling of the data obtained.
• Making teacher merely supervise, among others, the setup of the blog, choice of platforms to be used, and posting of information on the blog.
• Making the learners take lead position in generating ideas on how to influence the surrounding community to guarantee safe drinking water and environmental conservation through a range of good practices

The project stems from two problem in the community:

• There is a lot of pollution of nearby water sources with effluent from local wine makers and other waste dumpers who the community seem not to mind about.
• The community is very ignorant about safe drinking water.

The learners will therefore have to prove experimentally that the chemicals and effluent is actually affecting the living things in the water and so is dangerous. Also, the water the locals are drinking may actually be having either dangerous micro-organisms or dangerous pollutants. In doing this the learners will then have a platform to argue their case to convince the community to change their lifestyles. The suggestions they give to the locals should be those that work in the context of the locals and will also be generated in liaison with the locals.