Last Friday our form class 10R went into Kawakawa to go and pick up rubbish to tidy up our community. We noticed that our environment was really paru as we picked up almost 5 full bags of rubbish. It was really cool because when people in there cars drove past us they were encouraging us to do more they had a big fat smile on their face and they waved. My favourite part of the journey was the feed we all went to the dairy or pizza shop to get one big fat kai that satisfied my day. 

Last Friday our form class 10R went into Kawakawa to go and pick up rubbish to tidy up our community. We noticed that our environment was really paru as we picked up almost 5 full bags of rubbish. It was really cool because when people in there cars drove past us they were encouraging us to do more they had a big fat smile on their face and they waved. My favourite part of the journey was the feed we all went to the dairy or pizza shop to get one big fat kai that satisfied my day. 

 On Friday the 11th of September our class 10R had walked through Kawakawa and picked up rubbish through a path. We had started by walking through the park through commercial street and picked up rubbish along the way, the landscape of the hill was absolutely covered in rubbish, especially alcohol bottles that were in the process of degradation hiding in the bushes.

There was so much litter scattered across the roads that I believe strongly that littering is the main problem in our environment, it does horrible things to us such as contaminating once pristine clear water, now turned into nothing but a slop of grey, polluting the area and can danger our own wildlife. 

However, we can do so much to restore and protect the environment and we could start by just not littering and putting our rubbish in the bin. Ways we could definitely help with the restoration of our environment, is by minimising our waste, such as buying reusable and biodegradable bags and cups, making sure our rubbish enters the correct bin, making sure the compostable items can go towards the growing our plants and more, so much stuff could be done to do with the purification of our planet and recreating organic horticulture.

 I think it would be great to educate children about the importance of our environment, we could even teach them the basics by doing what we did and walk around town, picking up as much rubbish as possible and showing them how our future could be in jeopardy, and could be taught by people who already care much for the environment such as your dad or the caretaker of your school.

 Kia ora koutou, during the week 7-11 September the Nation celebrated our care and protection for Papatuanuku/ Mother Earth by way of cleaning her up. This is the second year our school has been involved and thanks to our Environmental Sustainability Management teacher Richard Higgins, he slits our small town of Kawakawa up by Street and we (classroom teachers) choose which one we want to take our students to and pick up all the rubbish. Our 9R Social Studies class chose Whitemans Road & Leonard Street and last Friday off we went with our high visability jackets, rubber gloves, rubbish bags and a yo ho ho. I think the students just liked being outdoors and walking around town. Here is a picture of our group and efforts. 

On Friday the 11 of September 10R, my form class and I walked around the landscape of Kawakawa cleaning the pollution and litter that was scattered around our beautiful environment. We went for a lazy hikoi with an important kaupapa. we were tasked with picking up the litter off the streets and stopping it getting into our sacred waterways.  Personally I didn’t pick up the biodegradable rubbish like food scraps for example, because overtime papatuanuku will absorb the compostable material and use the rich nutrients. I think that our teacher was teaching us about sustainability and how we could use better management systems to stop the environmental degradation and restore our community. Hopefully in the not too distant future everything will be organic and our planets inhabitants will realise that conservation of natural resources and restoration of natural landscapes is important to our planet so that we will leave a pristine world for the generations to come .       

In my opinion the most pressing environmental issue is Pollution, more specifically the pollution we make. On Friday 11th of September we walked the streets of Kawakawa picking up rubbish. This was our way of contributing to the restoration of our once pristine landscape. Picking up rubbish applies a positive impact on our environment, even if it’s only picking up a small bit it’s still something. 

Walking the streets of Kawakawa we found heaps and heaps of rubbish. Most of which were alcohol bottles, and plastic bags. I think as kaitiakitanga of Papatuanuku it is our responsibility to stop the contamination of our country. Filling around 6 rubbish bags of litter I think we did an alright job for our annual clean up. Although picking up rubbish may seem boring we seem to enjoy it, it’s a good chance for us to bond as a class and just have an overall good time.

Together as a class I think we made a positive impact on our earth. Even though it wasn’t much we still did a lot to help. I think as a school/community to help the environment we can be more sustainable with our use of plastics etc. We can watch how much we waste and make sure we put our rubbish in the bin and not on the ground. 

I think that doing the annual rubbish pickup is a good idea, not only because it’s helping restore the environment but also because it gives students a chance to be hands on and actually see how rubbish impacts our environment. This year was our second year of the Keep New Zealand beautiful scheme, and I think it was a success. I’m glad we had the opportunity to do the clean up, and i’d like to do it again.

 What can WE do to help restore and protect the environment? – By using biodegradable plastic bags, and being able to avoid taking cars or carpools when possible (traveling responsibly). So there’s less litter and less pollution to the environment, helping it gain more sustainability by the restoration of papatuanuku. And by shopping locally or for organic food, planting several trees to improve on the landscape making the purification more pristine. But also freeing us from contamination, giving us the opportunity of being able to improve the water globally, saving electricity and mainly just being the kaitiakitanga of our whenua. 

On Friday last week 10R took a hikoi down to Kawakawa to pick up rubbish. We went down at 10 and came back to school at 11:10. It was amazing to do this again because of the amount of rubbish littered throughout Kawakawa. Everywhere you looked there was basically rubbish. So we did our job as kaitiakitanga of the community and picked up as much rubbish as we could. 

Sexy paragraph

I strongly agree that its important to be Cybersmart because they are many bad things that can happen using your iPhone,Chromebook,laptop, iPad either online or on social media. Trying new things on a new app or site can leave big damage for eg.  receiving a virus and emails, posting personal information or images which can give people more information about you and either commenting or posting mean,hateful,disgusting things about someone or something. Personally I would keep my social media account private and only accept family and friends, Not post negative things about people and my location, Make sure I’m on the correct sites and try not sign up for ads,pop ups and any new site so I don receive any emails about promotions or deals.  

Reflection

This is a task I was set to do in English, we had Whaea Kerry come in and teach us about Cybersmart we are lucky enough to have her once a week. She teaches us about how to be Cybersmart,making sure we are on the correct sites and learning new techniques on our Chromebook. This is a sexy paragraph I’ve completed about why its important to be cyber smart, I really enjoyed this task it was really easy and I completed it in the time given, Hopefully next week I’ll get to post more about being Cybersmart.

 
Last week on Friday in Social Studies we went to Leonard Street and Whitemans Road in Kawakawa to clean up all the rubbish around the area it was real fun going out of school grounds to  clean up the environment. We had to split up in two groups so we can clean up both sides of the streets I don’t know if we got everything but we still did something. we took some photos of us cleaning and there was some videos and more. i hope we get to do more things like that.

And here is a photo of us when we finished cleaning