After the 5th grade students at The Environmental Charter School read the book Water is Life, they were inspired to apply their new knowledge to their Alcoa W5 project!
The Environmental Charter School is located in Pittsburgh, USA with students coming from the surrounding neighborhoods. Their own school garden is what the 5th graders had in mind when they started learning about the water cycle, including the role of water filtration and capture to slow runoff and mitigate the negative impacts of heavy rainfall. This inspired the students to want to add rain barrels in their school garden to help conserve water.
Their Alcoa W5 project started out with reading the book, We Are Water Protectors, which was inspired by Indigenous-led movements and is an urgent rallying to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption. Through the book and related activities, such as signing the Water Protectors Pledge, students gained new knowledge about indigenous conservation efforts and reflected on their own role within their school garden as both beneficiaries and stewards.
This led the students to surveying their school garden and connected with a local organisation called Upstream Pittsburgh to help them create a plan and set up the rain barrels in the garden. They then organised a volunteer day where parents, teachers and students helped tidy up the school garden, making room for the new rain barrels and preparing the garden for the summer.
With 8 teachers and 100 students between 3-5th grade involved, as well as parents and the team from Upstream Pittsburgh, this Alcoa W5 project introduced many new community members to the work that The Environmental Charter School is doing through their school garden. For the students, they not only learned about the water cycle through books but also got to put their knowledge into action. And the cherry on top – they’ll be able to water their school garden with captured rainwater for 50 days of the year!
The Alcoa W5 project of Environmental Charter School supports the following SDGs:
