G4 Environmental Action: Clean up Shalun Beach in Tamsui

On June 8th as part of our Grade 4 Unit on Sharing the Planet, our students took environmental action to clean up Shalun Beach in Tamsui. Our students have been learning about plastic pollution and its effects on the world's oceans and as a result were very interested in making a change in their local community. After a bit of research, they determined it would be possible to clean up a local beach. Our students learned about different ocean animals like sea turtles and local fish affected by plastic as well as which plastics were most used in our school. We managed to collect several bags of microplastics from the beach and ended up filling almost an entire van on one beach sweep. The students were proud of their efforts, but sad to see the amount of plastic they had collected. Grade 4 encourages those of you reading this to take action on plastic. Refuse when not needed, reduce your use, recycle and reuse to keep plastic out of our rivers, landfills and oceans.