Kids Teaching Kids
Kids Teaching Kids
The Kids in Action program run by the Sunshine Coast Council, is about empowering young people who are passionate about the environment, to learn, grow and teach other students. The program is strongly supported by the local indigenous community who guide and mentor the program. This year’s theme was, Hear on Country- Are you Listening? Over 18 schools participated and more than 250 students from Years 5-8, were engaged.
Our 2024 Kids in Action team of sixteen Year 5 students were exceptional in their ideas, passion and focus. We split our energy and time between exploring Respectful Relationships with the concept of racism in mind and the environmental impact of plastics and how we could work to create a more sustainable use for our waste. Both projects are still works in progress. Further details about our Precious Plastics project, is described below
Introduced to the concept of Precious Plastics by Ms Marnie Whittaker, the students were hooked on designing a logo and figuring out a process to collect and reuse the appropriate plastics. After discussions with Ms Beattie in Hospitality and Mr Learoyd in Technology, bottle caps were found to be the easiest, safest and most accessible item.
Inspired, the students ran a competition across the Junior Campus for Term 3. Each member of the team was in charge of a class, they collected, cleaned and counted bottle caps every Friday. This Monday on assembly, the competition was greatly contested with the winners of each year level announced, before a final drum roll. A whooping, 19 372 bottle caps were cleaned and counted, with 4E being the winners and recipients of a plastic keychain, made here at our school, using the bottle caps collected.
Pacific Lutheran College is currently the ONLY school on the Sunshine Coast and one of only three establishments that have a plastic shredder and press, on the Coast. We would love to purchase a more advanced, mobile machine and continue to have a collection point for our bottle caps moving forward.
Below is the Precious Plastics website links for anyone interested and if any external businesses are keen to invest, the Kids in Action are keen to continue this enterprise.
https://www.plastic.org.au/products/machine-school-workstation
Mrs Luanne Pollard, Teacher - Year 5