WATER SURGE UGYENTSE PRIMARY SCHOOL, SAMTSE, BHUTAN

Citizenship

CONTENT

Citizenship

Identifies issues and problems in the school or community that one might help solve

Character

Developing Empathy, Being Responsible, Building Citizenship

Global Goal

Skill

Problem-solving, Critical thinking, Reasoning

Age Group

10- 11 Years / Grade 5

Learning Standards

McREL Learning Standards - Grade 5

Prerequisite

NA

LEARNING GOAL & PURPOSE

A small water bottle is all that a young student can carry along with their lunch box to school. This is an inspiring story of young superheroes from Ugyentse Primary School, Samtse, Bhutan. They were bothered about the water scarcity and impure drinking water in their school. They approached an NGO and convinced them to fund for the water tank and water filter. Finally, their persistence paid off and they got a big Water tank to store water and two water filters for safe and pure drinking water for the entire school.

Lesson Plan

 

  • Hook: Show this video to your students and initiate the conversation with your students about ‘What do people in the nearby neighbourhood community do to purify their drinking water?’. List down the assumptions that students might have regarding the purification methods used by people in the neighbourhood community.
  • After listing down the assumptions, ask children if they would personally like to visit the neighbourhood community and find out themselves.
  • Organize for a bus trip to the nearby community and get your children to interact with the community people to understand more about their drinking water facility.
  • Come back to school and discuss the importance of clean water to drink and ask your children what they would like to do for the community people.
  • List down the solutions and see if they are inspired by the video to go and buy water filters for few homes in the community.
  • Ask them to work on generating funds by setting up a fair / creating products and sell them / approach an NGO,  etc. Suggestion: You can show this video for children to get some ideas to generate funds - https://youtu.be/qg1JiNNksGE?list=PLOS7LSVwOyfIfHGbRSeW-DEU2HVFl6_0T
  • Decide together on a deadline for generating funds to go buy the water filters.
  • Give week’s / two week’s time for fund generation. Children can work in groups for the same.
  • Once they earn money, ask them to do little market research regarding a good quality water filter and check for the best rates and discounts.
  • Buy them as a class and go and give them to the people in the community.
  • Remember to share this story of change with all the grades in the school, parent body and teacher team.
  • Closing the loop – Have a reflection time to look at how each member of the class added value to this group work. Ask children to identify how has this experience changed them.