On Thursday, 14 October, a group of Year 6 Pinewood pupils went to the Dragon School for an Eco Conference. Lots of schools from around the country participated in this exciting event.
The first activity was an interesting speech on the forests and why to save them. The lady told us ten reasons, but I’m just going to tell you three: 1) Trees breathe out oxygen and breathe in carbon dioxide and after years and years of sucking in carbon dioxide cutting down the tree would let out a massive amount of carbon dioxide. This is bad for the environment. 2) More than half of the world’s animal species live in forests, quite a few which live in trees. So cutting trees down is like tearing down a home where animals need the shelter. 3) Trees help the weather system by absorbing water and letting it out as a gas which will in large amounts produce clouds which produce rain. So cutting a tree down will cause a problem in the weather system.
After this speech there were 5 different activities that pupils could participate in. They were English, Geography, English, Science, Art and CDT. Pinewood chose to go to Science where there was a short talk about new ways to make energy (solar panels, wind power and hydro electricity). After that the speaker told us about her holiday house in Ireland which has no electricity so she has to heat the house by burning something called peat. Then we started the fun by going around the lab and testing out different experiments which showed examples of different ways to make power. My favorite was the hydrogen car which ran on hydrogen. You never would have guessed!
After science we had lunch followed by a display of the bee keeping at the Dragon. We also got to taste the honey that the bees of Dragon made. They call it Dragon nectar. Pinewood took over serving and a Pinewood pupil videoed Mr. Burchnall and Jess Tregonning serving the honey to the eager children waiting to have a try.
The last thing we did on our excellent day out was learn about how a woman brought rainforest tree roots to England. She put them in Trafalgar square to show people about the rainforest and how it is dying. We watched a video showing the whole excavation and everything that happened and what inspired the woman to do it.
By Hunter Booth