Schoolchildren learn life's a beach when it's clean!

Friday 06 May 2016

Primary and secondary school students teamed up with marine biologists and a local hotel this week to clean up the beach.

St John's School, Hautlieu's baccalaureate students and staff from the Radisson Blu got together on Wednesday to get rid of the rubbish at West Park.

All the children from the primary school spent time in the sand looking for sea 'enemies', picking up what wasn't meant to be there and learning more about what is.

St John's School teacher James Matthews said: "The beach survey and beach clean was a collaborative project between St. John's School and Jersey Seasearch, a marine species survey group that sits alongside the Marine Biology Section of La Société Jersiaise. We joined forces with Hautlieu School and the Radisson Hotel who were working together on the beach clean, with the Hautlieu students helping support the teaching and learning of our pupils."

(Hautlieu teacher Leonie Bedward shows the children how to use a quadrate to spot and record different marine species.)

"The day provided plenty of opportunity to apply much of our learning in school to a real life context. The children were busy exploring rock pools, identifying a vast variety of marine species under the guidance of local experts.

"The beach clean focused on categorising the marine litter that we find and thinking about its source, as well as measuring the quantity of marine litter found. All of the data collected on the day is being bought back in to the classroom and will be used to support the teaching and learning in a variety of subject areas, particularly, maths, science and geography."

Marine biologist and Hautlieu teacher Leonie Bedward said: "It's all about ownership of who's responsibility this environment is. It gets forgotten about a lot and so if we can instill the wonder and amazement of what they can find on their doorstep at such an early age then that stays with them as they get older and that's what we need to do with this generation - show them that they need to be passionate about their environment (and they are!) and protect it."