English for Environmental Science is an integral part of my lessons in Environmental Protection Technician classes. This year, my 11th graders have mostly dealt with carbon footprint and 3 R’s, i.e. the ways we can reduce our negative impact on the environment. We carried out various activities, aimed not only at developing necessary language skills, but also at raising environmental awareness among others at school, both the students and the staff.
Therefore, our first step was to establish the level of environmental awareness of the target group. Students were put into groups of four and their task was to think of relevant questions which they would include in an online survey. When they completed the task, the representative of each group read their suggestions. The class as a whole agreed on the ones they would put in the survey. Then, three students created two versions, one in English, and the other in Serbian, using Google Forms.
English version: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfddod8YSeGzOn5ooaed6nyguGY8nov1dI3Cqa9bk2ojPrgXg/viewform?usp=sf_link
The link for the version in Serbian was shared with the students and the staff. Most of the respondents were unfamiliar with the term carbon footprint. Otherwise, they showed quite a good knowledge of major environmental issues, at least in theory.
After that, some students chose to make ppt presentations, others opted for classroom posters. We ended up with 2 PowerPoint presentations and 5 posters.
Finally, I had the idea to make a video with some useful tips for a more responsible behaviour everyone could adopt. A few students recorded themselves, but we couldn’t complete it at the time because of the workload – they had to study other subjects. The initial enthusiasm gradually faded away. However, we pulled it through in our two end-of-year lessons. Using my mobile phone, I recorded them in the schoolyard. They didn’t have enough time to rehearse their sentences. The recordings are of no high quality. Putting all that aside, I believe they did it quite well. Besides, their messages are worth listening to.
phs our english nook 