Demonstration of cultural understanding and global awareness

• Who are the students your students will communicate with (specific location, grade level)?
• When would your students contact these other students (at what point in their project work)?
• What kinds of questions would they ask each other and what kinds of information would they share?
• What will they do with the information they get from the other students?

• My students will be communicating with third grade students from the Himanchal High School, which has 350 students from grades kindergarten through twelfth grade. The school is located in the remote village Nangi, in western Nepal, in the Himalayas. The school has three compost toilets: one for boys that live in the school, one for girls who live in the school and one for students that only attend during the day; it also has computers and access to the Internet.
• My students would use epals to communicate with these students of the same grade level after they have an understanding of how much water is used for each flush, where the water goes, the filtration process and how it is recycled back into our drinking water. This would also be after a field trip to the local water plant, so that during their discussions with the students from Nangi they would have a full understanding of how our system works. This way, they would clearly be able to see the differences and similarities between our systems.Therefore, our classroom would begin using epals toward the end of our work on the project.
• Prior to utilizing epals, as a class we would create a KWL chart, filling in information that we know about our investigation (which would be a great review) and information that we want to know. They could use that chart to help them think of questions to ask and information to share. My students would ask questions such as: What do your toilets look like? Do you flush your toilets? If you flush them, where does the water go? If you don’t flush them, what happens to the waste? What is the purpose of having a composting toilet? How does a composting toilet work? What is it like having a composting toilet in your school? Yet this investigation is based on inquiry so students will be encouraged to ask any questions they have regarding the topic.

        The types of information that my students would share would be similar; They would                 describe our toilets, tell them how much water is wasted with each flush, describe how                 water gets from the toilet to a water plant, the filtration process that occurs and how it is                 recycled back into our drinking water. Students will also make sure to answer any                         questions the other students might have about our toilet systems. As teachers we should         collaborate to make this a quality learning experience for all students in each classroom.

• As a class we would discuss the information they learned from the students from Nangi and finish filling out our KWL chart. We could also create lists of pros and cons about our system as well as theirs and compare the two. Armed with that information, the students could write a letter to the school board discussing the reasons that they like our system or reasons they don’t. If they dislike it, they could write about an alternative system and how it would impact the school. Students could also share this information with the local water plant regarding our filtration system. It might be important for students to share their concerns with the community.

http://www.himanchal.org/school-projects.html

(that is a website describing the compost toilets at the school)