Students have been working on their answers to the guiding question for our expedition Staying Alive where the GQ was: Is survival sufficient?
Here is an extract from Katie’s work which is brimming with scientific knowledge, strong writing, textual references but above all… compassion.
Beautiful work Katie! Simply stunning in fact.
“Our final case study was access to clean water. There were 2 different methods we looked at such as filtration and distillation. Filtration can separate an insoluble from a solid such as sand. The method for distillation is evaporating the water and then condensing it into a separate container and from this you can separate soluble solids like salt. We in the Uk are very lucky as almost all of us have access to clean filtered water straight from our tap. The reason why we were lucky is we read a text about 2 girls in Africa and how far they have to travel for water. One child had a water kiosk in their village, whilst the other had to walk miles everyday for water even if it wasn’t clean. The child that had access to the water kiosk was able to help out with family on the farm and grow their business, good health, wouldn’t miss out on education and able to spend time with friends. On the other hand the child who had to walk miles everyday would become very poorly as the water would be clean and not have a good education as they would be walking for miles. This links back to our immersion when we watched a video of a woman walking for hours to receive water and this just shows how much people around the world walk for water and aren’t able to get filtered water. In my opinion the countries that have access to clean water should help out with the other ones that don’t as it’s unfair how long they travel for and what they miss out on. And we all have to ensure everyone is lucky enough to have water that’s fresh.
My answer to the guiding question is no. I don’t believe survival is sufficient. You also need to enjoy it as life is much more than surviving. Like the actors in station 11, I want everyone to make sure they explore the world and how beautiful the world is, new foods, different cultures, how the world works, good education and healthy growth. For our final product in science we had put together a food box from the cookbook Cooking on a bootstrap from Jack Munroe. Her cookbook includes healthy and cheap meals for you and your families to cook! These food boxes will be donated to a family through Edberts House, a charity in Gateshead. My part in the final product was Sunday night tea. I had made socca gluten free frying pan pizza base and cookies since I had some free time. These were delicious and I hope the families will appreciate this as it will definitely help out and give them a big smile on their faces!”
