Our Living Roof

About

This project is trying to find an ecofriendly solution to diminish our dependence of air conditioning,and so forth our consumption of electricity,while at the same time we return to nature a space taken by the construction of a building.Also we want involve our community into solving this problem by making them aware that roof gardens are and affordable,ecofriendly solution to diminish our consumption of electricity and ecological footprint. Overall plan will involve 5 phases.On first phase students will make a poll to know if students and teachers actually feel classrooms are too hot to comfortably take classes,that way we will know if there is actually a problem or is just an assumption.On second phase we will take temperatures outside and inside classrooms to see if there is a considerably temperature increase beyond what is known as the thermal comfort.That way will have data to support the claims done by students and teachers.Third phase will be creating an ecologically friendly solution to decrease temperatures inside the classrooms. This will include the creation of roof garden,which we expect will help us reach Thermal Comfort temperature range,while at the same time we diminish future consumption of electricity and ecological footprint.Phase four will consist on gathering temperatures inside and outside the classrooms for 2 months to find out if the roof garden worked.Data will be compared to the data taken prior to building our roof garden.That way we will find out if this is a possible solution to the problem stated.On phase 5 we will start an educational program that will include educational materials and presentations about the benefits of roof gardens as an ecofriendly,economical an esthetic solutions to the problem stated.We will invite our political leaders and school officials to make them aware of this solution so we can become part of the solution. Finally, phase six will include showing to the whole community our findings and solutions to the problem by giving lectures about their importance to make them aware how we all can become part of the solution an become part of our school environmental organization call "The Green Guards".The plan to evaluate student's work will be divided in 2 groups.First students involved in developing the project page will be given milestones they must complete according to a timeline.During the whole process skills such as teamwork, responsibility and communication will be assessed. Their ability to use visuals aids and text to express ideas and information, their effort and ability to use effectively English as a second language with the less grammatical errors possible will also be evaluated. Other groups of students who will participate on the project are the ones collaborating on"Debates","Votes" and"Message Boards" but are not responsible for creation of the project page itself.These work will be evaluated as extracurricular work and extra points will be awarded for their effort and help and integration into the project activities.Students will be ask to express their ideas in English as best as they can when answering the"Debates" and "Message Boards", but since English is not their main language their use of(ESL)will be evaluated according to how understandable are their ideas.For that reason either fellow students or the 6 students responsible for the design of the page are allowed to edit or correct entries. The expected students learning outcomes are the use of English to effectively express their ideas, the understanding of how human activities can affect the environment (both positive and negative)and the importance of teamwork and hard work to reach their goals. The main curriculum goals covered are the uses of investigation techniques to solve problems by the Scientific Method, while helping the student develop skills such as problem solving, analysis, synthesis and critical thinking.

The project's essential problem, question or issue:
How can we create an ecological solution to decrease temperature inside our school’s classrooms while at the same time we decrease our ecological foot print and improve thermal comfort?

Timeline: Sep. 14, 2011 - Apr. 25, 2012

Category: Science & Technology > Life Science > Ecology