Library News | Junior School
Student Learning
Year 2’s Library lesson this week continued reflecting their unit of inquiry Our personal choices can impact a sustainable future, which tied in beautifully with the Junior School’s Environmental Day last Friday. We read the book One Little Bag; An Amazing Journey. The big idea in this story is that one little bag, one well-used, can have a well-recycled life.
The author, Henry Cole includes notes at the end of the book sharing his reflection of the very first Earth Day, and his decision that day to reuse his small paper bag that his lunch was packed in.
“All that talk about conserving resources and recycling had made me think. The next day, I used that same little bag to carry my lunch to school again. And the next day. And the next day. For three years.
At the cafeteria lunch table, the bag accumulated graffiti over time: scribbled notes, homework assignments, phone numbers, and doodles. It looked a little weather-beaten with all the staples and Scotch tape I used to keep it together. I figure that bag was used about seven hundred times. That’s seven hundred lunches, seven hundred times folded and unfolded. It became soft, like felt, and nearly capable of folding itself. And, when I graduated and went off to college, I “willed” the bag to my friend Susan, a year younger, who carried her lunch in it all the next year!”
The boys really enjoyed this story and had interesting observations and rich discussions about the book. We then considered the way we use paper in the Library and that we don’t have a system in the Library for recycling. The boys were then asked to come up with a design of how we can fix this problem.
Current Provocations in the library
Grab a tray and create a story.
Respond in writing; what do you like about Winter?
Thinking creatively; what can you make?
Books about the environment, have you borrowed any of these?
Mrs Nikki Bowden | Teaching and Learning Librarian
