In the starting of term 3, Mrs. Ziemer announced that the exhibition was coming up. The PYP exhibition is the time fifth graders get to show their skills and abilities to others. In other schools, most children my age would have been worrying about exams but we needed to pose the skills they needed for their exam except we also got to have fun. We all got to choose a topic. After that, we looked for other people who had a topic similar to mine. My group was made up of 4 people. Marmik, Doris, Cole and I formed the MAD-C (M for Marmik A for Aditya D for Doris and C for Cole).

My topic was excessive transport. My three questions were: 1: how too many cars could affect the environment 2: how too many cars could affect people 3: what we can do to reduce all the bad affects.  I chose this topic because I was always told that air pollution is bad for my health but I didn’t know how. Similarly, I didn’t know how cars affect the environment. After I knew all these answers, my next step was to find what I can do to help myself and the environment.

In the beginning of the topic, I was trying to make as many things as possible to cover up my board but when I was actually putting things on the board, I found it really difficult to find space. One thing I would keep the same would be that I would keep the brochures, quiz and the game to attract more people. If I did the exhibition again I would print more brochures and put the game in the end of the quiz instead of the middle because people just played the quiz till the game came up and left right after playing the game.  I found out that talking about the same thing over and over again to everybody made me bored. I also got annoyed because people didn’t want to listen to my information. They only wanted to play the game. I got angry because little children came to our stall and didn’t listen to our information. Instead they started asking all the stalls if they have candy or not. Some people were also very rude to us and acted really mean and it was hard not being rude back to them. The fun thing was that all the adult’s questions were very interesting and it was quite enjoyable to talk to them about my topic.

I learnt that some of the actions I was taking were bad and I learnt how they were bad. Now I know how I can reduce my carbon footprint. I learnt what to do to save the environment and also not make a change in my life. A small change can make a big difference.

I never knew that if we turned off the television with the remote, it didn’t really turn off. Now I always remember to turn it off using the main plug. Another thing I learnt was that whenever I turn an electronic item on, it uses up more volts than it would take to leave it on. Earlier I used to turn off the lights when I leave the room but now when I am leaving a room I always think whether I will come back right away. Now that I know that even though a bus is bigger than a car, it releases 170 grams less carbon dioxide than a car. Now I walk more than using transport and my parents walk too. Now that I know that www.blackle.com and www.iDarkle.com (these search engines save over 632,013.367 watts per hour) are better for the environment because the pixels turn off, I changed my phone wallpaper and the computer wallpaper black so the pixels can stay off and use less energy. Now that I know what is good and what is bad, my job is to persuade other people to change the way they do things.

Please help not only the environment but also yourself and your future generations. So go ahead and do your part now.

Thanks

Aditya K