Why did the Chickenman cross the road?

The threat to rainforest from human hands is posing new challenges for species to battle with. Cool Earth a Cornish charity helping protect the rainforest is running a competition for students do design their own organism. (Visit http://www.coolearth.org/)

The competition is open to all primary school children across the UK and secondary students aged 12 and under. They want your students to design and name a new species of plant or animal that has imaginative ways of dealing with the ever increasing challenges of living in the rainforest. The winning entry will have their design illustrated by Rob Steen and will receive a copy of Flanimals signed by Ricky Gervais. The school will also receive one acre of rainforest protected in their name and Cool Earth would like to visit winning school to present the prize. Two runners up will be presented with a signed copy of Flanimals and their school will receive one acre of rainforest protected in their name.

To make things even easier for you I have produced on behalf of Cool Earth a resource booklet that contains all the curriculum links, lesson objectives, outcomes, success criteria and a link to a video as a starter to your lesson as well as some suggested activities to carry out as part of the lesson. The lesson resource pdf is titled Can you create your own organism and can be downloaded from: http://drop.io/coolearth

How to enter? 

The design must be a picture of the animal, annotated with the ideas of how the species has been designed to survive. Entries will be judged on creativity and understanding of the conditions that species in the rainforest must face. Email the pictures if you are able to scan or photograph any to schools@coolearth.org making sure you mention in the subject The Chicken man Or post them to us: Cool Earth, E16, Opie Building, Cornwall College Camborne, Trevenson Road, Redruth, Cornwall, TR15 3RD. Make sure the student’s name, age and school are on the entries and that you include the schools contact details. The closing date is the 20^th November 2009. For terms & conditions please see http://www.coolearth.org/ or for more information and other resources for schools and teachers see http://www.coolearth.org/365/category/teachers-168.html

(Pictured with the year 12 students are Dan Roberts, Assistant Head and Jemma Woodman from COOL EARTH, who came in to film the students’ work.)

Last week as part of a unit of work looking at fermentation, a class of Yr12 completing the L3 BTEC in Forensic Science carried out a practical with a bit of a difference. The students complete a practical to brew beer so they can relate the theory to the small scale practical within the lab and then see how this is replicated on a much bigger scale in industry. (Don’t worry they don’t get to drink it! Although we have had suggestions of many names of beer that the school could produce particularly with the livetsock theme such as Dot’s drop after our pig Dorothy.) Now you would think that brewing beer would be very interesting to students although it hasn’t seemed to have that effect so we tried to be a bit more creative this time. Georgie Carey the Year 12 teacher came to see me for some ideas and I had just the thing. Whilst on my visit to Peru I spent some time with the Ashaninka people who taught me how to make the traditional beer called Masato or Pirrizi from the Manioc root.

However it is not exactly the same as the more traditional brewing methods that we are used to as the villagers in the mashing stage chew the manioc, as well as something more familiar the sweet potato. When they have been mixed with enough saliva they are then spat out back into the beer mixture. This is an integral part of the beer making process.

Watch the video here at the bottom of my home page: http://www.coolearth.org/379/cool-earth-schools-zone-36/teachers-168/dan-roberts-teacher-uk-896.html

Quite surprisingly we were able to source some Manioc in Plymouth which was quite a shock, the rest of the ingredients were fine we just needed some willing and able students to produce their own saliva – easy! The students then replicated the same Ashaninkan process within the classroom in Cornwall and then ‘transferred’ their saliva/beer mix to an appropriately scientific receptacle for the purposes of the experiment. After adding some water, the ‘delicious’ mix is now fermenting nicely in the classroom. Students were somewhat relieved to hear they would not be drinking the brew at any stage, just testing it to see the impact of the enzymes in saliva on the fermentation process! As a result of the planning to carry out these lessons Jemma Woodman from Cool Earth came down to film the students completing the practical. The lesson resources for this if you wanted to replicate it will be available on the Cool Earth Website in the Cool Schools part on my homepage. Here is one of the main resources too: http://drop.io/coolearth

Have you got any similar stories of bringing the outside world into the classroom? Please share these by leaving a comment.

This Tuesday ten lucky year 8 students from saltash.net travelled with myself and our Headteacher Isobel Bryce, to Home Park for the launch of the COOL EARTH –COOL SCHOOL initiative.

If you have read my blogs on Peru (Pisco Sours, Ponchos & Panpipes) you will already know that Cool Earth is a Cornish based charity committed to saving the world’s rainforests and reducing carbon emissions. Our school as part of the project is the first school in the world to become involved in this project which has been designed to encourage schools to work with local businesses to raise money which can be used to support the indigenous peoples of the rainforest and help prevent deforestation. As a piece of rainforest, roughly the size of a football pitch, is destroyed in the world very second, it was thought appropriate that saltash.net should link up with Plymouth Argyle and ask the team to sponsor the scheme.

Our visit to Argyle’s ground included a training session with the players and a tour around the stadium. We had a fantastic time, I found myself very busy doing interviews for various press, one minute I was doing a radio interview the next it was for one of the local newspapers. As well as enjoying themselves, the students also took on board the seriousness of what the initiative is all about. The students already have lots of plans about how they can encourage more people to become involved in the scheme and help to raise more money.

You can read more about the Cool School programme it has gone live this week. Please visit http://www.coolearth.org/365/category/teachers-168.html for more information how you and your school can take part. There are lots of competitions and resources available too. Also if you want to have a laugh I have my own page on there with some videos and pictures, you may particularly like to see the video of me talking about making the traditional Ashaninkan beer made from spit and the manioc root called Masato. http://www.coolearth.org/379/cool-earth-schools-zone-36/teachers-168/dan-roberts-teacher-uk-896.html

Check out the article below taken from the local newspaper below or listen to the broadcast on Radio Cornwall:

http://drop.io/1h4igg6

Plymouth Argyle is living up to its Green Army name as the team aiming to save an endangered rainforest in Peru.

Argyle has teamed up with Saltash.net community school and Cornish charity Cool Earth to take on the task. Argyle is protecting an area of rainforest the size of a football pitch, representing the amount of rainforest destroyed every second. A Plymouth Argyle spokesman said: “Taking part in The Cool School initiative means we’re being climate responsible and helping local children make a difference.”

The Cool School scheme is developed by Cool Earth and enables businesses to be carbon positive by protecting endangered rainforest on behalf of a local school.  Argyle is saving 260 tonnes of CO2 emission through their sponsorship, which also provides Saltash.net school an account where they can view their forest and connect with rainforest schools. Teacher Dan Roberts from the school has just returned from Peru with the charity after spending time living with a tribe and seeing what the rainforest meant to them. He said: “The Cool School initiative is a clever way of getting businesses to be carbon positive whilst helping UK schools to build relationships with our rainforest cousins.”

Cool Earth is already protecting 60,000 acres of endangered rainforest for tribal communities in South America. Matthew Owen from Cool Earth said: “Deforestation causes more climate change than the entire US economy. “Plymouth Argyle FC and Saltash.net School are leading the way in putting rainforest conservation in the heart of our schools and at the top of the business agenda.”

The charity has received backing from Sir David Attenborough as well as comedian Ricky Gevais who will promote the charity during his new live shows. Local businesses can make their chosen school a “Cool School” by sponsoring an acre or more of endangered rainforest.

Nik Peachey is a learning technology consultant, I downloaded his recent document web 2.0 tools for teachers and shared this with the teachers in our school. You can follow him or message him on twitter http://twitter.com/NikPeachey or visit one of his blogs for teachers: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/

I tried one of Nik’s suggestions out and so did a colleague of mine last week. It was something called Dvolver moviemaker: http://www.dfilm.com/live/mm.html

“Dvolver Moviemaker is a simple tool that enables you to create your own animated cartoons by selecting from a range of characters backgrounds and scenarios and adding your own dialogue text bubble. The movies can then be sent by email or embedded into blogs or websites for others to enjoy.”

It is ridiculously easy to use and really has bags of potential as a learning tool. I used it with my Year 11 students this week. We had been learning about Homeostasis and we had completed the activities we were working on a lot quicker than I had anticipated. I then asked the students to review what we had learnt and to reflect on their learning. As I had them in Year 10 they were used to how they did this, normally they would use their learning log where they would reflect on their learning at the end of every lesson. This was simply the right hand side of their exercise books. However today I was thinking about an email I had just before the start of the lesson from Marc an ICT teacher from our school who had looked at Nik’s booklet on web 2.0 tools and had tried out the Dvolver tool. He emailed me the link to one of the student’s animations and I had watched it just before the lesson and thought it was brilliant. Have a look at her animation on protecting information here: http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-303208

So I said to my year 11 students do you want to try something and explained quickly what it was. At this point there was less than 20 minutes of the lesson left and I had never used it myself – all I had was the link to the website. So we basically went through the options which were extremely straight forward and together as a class we made a really simple animation on Homeostasis in about 3 minutes and then watched it back.

The students absolutely loved it and they said we have to make our own, so with 15 minutes left they set off to create their own. The results were fantastic though this creative tool they had demonstrated their new knowledge about Homeostasis in fact one of my favourite animations was a romantic love scene on Homeostasis which basically involves a man chatting up another man but discussing the correct science behind homeostasis. It is both funny yet informative and it was produced by a couple of girls who seemed to thrive in using this tool and produced excellent results. I never thought I would see Homeostasis uses as a chat up line I guess that what teaching is about! We then posted the links to the videos to their own class ning site. At the end of the lesson the students said that really what we should be doing next is reviewing each other’s animations to check the content and how accurate this is and peer reviewing them. They said that this will help them review their own learning whilst coaching the other students, I agreed and now this is the start of our next lesson. This is the student’s really taking control of their own learning and giving them real input into developing their own innovative curriculum. To watch their animations click on the following link: http://dan-sgjbx.posterous.com/

My Year 11 students loved using this and I am sure that any age of students would like to use it even 6^th formers. The best things about this tool is that is free, easy to use and also the final product looks totally professional. You definitely need to have a go at Dvolver moviemaker and let me know how you get on by posting a comment with a link to any animation on my blog. Don’t forget to download Nik’s document where you can read about other uses for Dvolver and other web 2.0 tools.

Wow so this probably is my last blog post specifically about our visit to the Ashaninka people with Cool Earth. I promised to keep it to no more than ten, I could have written about ten more but I am sure I will be writing follow up posts on the Teacher fellowship itself, potential fundraising and other teaching resource related posts. After the chickens ate the toads for breakfast we finished up and said our goodbyes to the village of Tinkerani, the people had been so kind and welcoming and we had experienced some amazing things. As we trekked through the rainforest it was a time for reflection and lots of sad feelings about leaving. We were heading back to near Cuti to the ex missionary for two reasons: 1) To receive a telephone call via the Sat phone and 2) To attend an official meeting as part of the Bioclimatic Association which is basically committee of representatives from all the community that’s ultimate aim is to protect the rainforest. Drill is the head of this committee, I have mentioned him before.

Whilst we were in the middle of the meeting a spider monkey decided to join in and have its say about protecting the rainforest and ran through the meeting. I decided to throw it some sugar cane which it found extremely satisfying and refreshing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftn3av0k1-0

After the meeting we returned to Cuti to stay with Chambuka and Daniel again and what a welcome we had. Cesar had a surprise for us as he had organised for the boat to take us on a river cruise later and had provided some cold beer (real beer not manioc) This was fantastic to taste something else other than water and what a lovely thought. So we had a fantastic few hours cooling down drinking beer and then having our face painted with a local plant. Watch this video about it featuring Clover and Chambuka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKq-Y_FDGyc

My painted face just turned into what looked like fake tan very quickly – There wasn’t really any pattern etc as you can see from the video. We then exchanged more gifts, well I basically began to hand over all the stuff I had brought that they needed like clothes etc. One of the kids who had travelled with us all along called Danny I made a real connection with and so I gave him my prized England shirt which was completely clean as I had always intended to give it to someone. The video is funny as you can hear him Mum Chambuka telling him to get it off quickly, to not get it dirty and to save it for school! It is great to know that mums are the same everywhere I remember my mum saying the same thing to me years ago!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiRet7yY7cI

What came next was once again another highlight of the trip – this was a sunset cruise along the river – what a way to end our time in Cuti. This was fantastic just sitting there and seeing a different part of the environment and really just soaking up the rainforest. It was pure bliss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4Tx7HlOP_U

So our time in Peru was beginning to end we would travel the following day back out on a plane again to Satipo where we would then catch the night bus to Lima (Which was like the Harry Potter night bus – well the speed of it but was complete luxury! I have never travelled so well, the National Express has a lot to learn!) Then once in Lima we had a full day and evening to enjoy the luxury of the Raddison, to do a bit of shopping, sightseeing and a very nice evening meal before we all flew home the next day.

Now that is not the end of the final blog post yet – there are still many things I could talk about like waiting round all the next day to fly out of the rainforest and the weather being too bad and we were running out of time to all fly out and we were close to staying another night in Cuti or missing the night bus. While we were waiting we were running out of water and were drinking boiled water which was nice and smokey! I could also mention Matthias and his genius use of a belt in a stoilet but I will leave that to your imagination. I could also talk about the amazing plane ride back with our trusted pilot Enrico One of my final memories of Peru will be leaving the last village of Cuti as this was the last time I would really see the Ashaninka people, I was really sad to be leaving, we had grown to really like them, we had certainly grown on them. At first Chambuka the lady we had stayed with was a little distant but by those last few hours she wanted to spend more time with us, I think back now and remember how she kept asking me things and wanting me to show her things and would basically call my name to come and look at something. It was a real privilege and honour to spend some time with them they are such lovely people.

Then just before we were about to go we finally discovered the reason behind something that had been bugging me a little bit. I am afraid to say I had become a little paranoid whilst visiting as every time our group were introduced to new people we would go round and be introduced and when it got to me every time without fail everyone would laugh. Now once is fine but when this happens every time you start to develop a complex and question yourself whether your flies are undone or something else. We finally found out why Daniel the local headteacher of the primary school presented me with two gifts, this was an absolute honour and I was really touched. I was presented with two things I could wear round my neck, the first was a turtle’s shell which represented strength and to reflect I was a powerful man and the second a little bit more unusual was the voice box of a howler monkey which represented that I commanded many voices. I was then also told why everyone laughed at me which was because I was a gentle giant with a big smile which was one of the nicest things anyone has said about me.

This visit to the Amazon rainforest to meet the Ashaninka people was the most amazing experience ever. This was a real once in a life time opportunity to learn from the Ashaninka people about the challenges they have to face living within their environment and it was truly an honour to be welcomed and accepted within their community. What Cool Earth is doing is without doubt making a massive difference to the Ashaninka and also the entire world.

So it was our second day in Tinkerani but we had a few issues with our return travel. To cut a long story short there were some potential issues with a little bit of civil unrest, road closings, poor weather for flying and possibly a small issue of confusion over what day it actually was. What day actually was it anyway? Because of this poor Dilwyn had been volunteered to trek back to Cuti to the satellite phone to make a few enquiries which left the rest of us to go trekking in the rainforest.  Overnight we had some more illness this time with Clover and Jemma falling ill.

We went trekking with some of the kids from the village and some of the local teachers and we were led by Haimi. In fact not only did he lead us but he took us across the river where it was too dangerous to swim on a very small traditional raft one at a time. Carlos made me go first to obviously test it was safe and with a break down in our communication I thought he told me to lie down on my stomach which was to great amusement to everyone watching as I lied down as if it was a surfboard! I was then told to sit on it so sat down on it only to find that as we started to cross that the river flowed over it making my bum very wet – the best way I found out as other people crossed was to crouch down on it! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBQd-bM5LOo

The rainforest walk was amazing just seeing some of the size of the vegetation such as the tree shown in the video thought to be around 500 years old. It was beautiful walking in such an amazing environment that I had never experienced before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3xFS8wa0rI

When we returned to camp Clover was feeling really bad and when you read on you may see why she went to bed, I think she knew exactly what was going to happen at the village meeting later on in the afternoon!

Dilwyn had returned and so we went to the village meeting where we discussed the work of Cool Earth, Ecotribal and what we were all doing there. We gave gifts and then we were given gifts. We then watched some performances and were entertained such as by the bird man who was brilliantly talented at bird calls.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P1ivYcUcbw

Then we were asked to do a performance ourselves… What? I at first thought perhaps I had misheard them – nope they definitely wanted s to do some sort of performance, we had a chat about what we could possibly do but we didn’t all seem to know the words to anything. Oh dear now I know why Clover was back at camp being ill, also for some reason Carlos and Dil were not to be involved and Matthias was also too ill to help in the performance. What came next was all that can be described as sweet music! I just wish that we could recreate that magic that happened there in the village here back home and we could be in with a chance of winning X factor. Seriously it was bad but they all seemed to enjoy it. You can watch the video clip below of the performance (if you can call it that. Please note the only reason I have not deleted this and have not put it live on the internet is because although it is something I am not completely proud of I am less embarrassed about it than some of my colleagues hence here it is.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNnM2mVFGYU

One of the best things about that performance was that Clover could actually here it all from her sick bed quite a distance away.  So as we weren’t going to change our daily routine we all went down for a swim and a wash in the river – today it was much slower and me and Matthias had a swim around and managed to see two fishing spiders catching small fish on the bank of the river which was really cool.

It was going to be our last evening in Tinkerani and as it was going dark we began to see loads of bats and I mean lots of them. We had seen them before but there were so many which seemed odd however as dusk came we then realised why. As we sat down for dinner we quickly became dinner ourselves, talk about the last supper. It was if after the storm in the last day or so a million new flies had started their life cycle in the village, no wonder the bats were here and very active however there were simply too much food for them as they all disappeared probably because they were too heavy to fly. Our last evening was to be a feast but we were the buffet!

We woke up early in the morning and planned to start trekking back to Cuti at around 8am, we started to pack up the tents and discovered that we had been sleeping on a load of toads – now that’s why we had such a good sleep. We were angry at the toads as we felt they were not really doing their jobs properly as instead of sleeping under our tents they could have been eating all teh flies that were attacking us. In fact in a bizarre twist of fate we discovered the camps unusual food chain. The flies at us, which in turn were eaten by the toads but as you can see in the videos below when we discovered the frogs so did the chickens, so the chickens ate the toads which was interesting because we had been eating the chickens. Don’t ask me who was the top of the food chain? Possibly the flies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRjepeQ7Q8U

So we had been in Peru for a good few days now and in the rainforest for a couple and guess what we hadn’t even seen a sniff of rain (A very common saying in Peru). So we had been for a lovely swim in the river after getting very hot and sticky on the trek and then we realised that actually big dark clouds were approaching and we didn’t have long before it was going to dark and we still hadn’t set up our tents.

As we were setting up the tents the weather drastically changed and a really big wind started, the sky changed colour and the thunder started with large flashes of sheet and then forked lightening. The thunder and lightning was fantastic and then the rain started, we had a problem as we then discovered our tents were not waterproof so we had to drag them under some shelter to stop us getting soaked as we sleep. We then woke up to yet more rain – I loved this because I was beginning to worry that we had come all this way to the rainforest and would not get any rain. Watch the video below and you can both see and hear the rain as we were having our breakfast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzJVTmr6qm8

We woke up the next morning to Ruth shouting (well not shouting, a raised voice asking can things get into the ten from outside such as spiders? Stephen replied saying he didn’t think so, she then responded saying it looks like there is a big one hanging from the roof of the tent. Now I must explain that in the previous days I had become accustomed to seeing Ruth instantly perform the river dance when even a small fly had come too close to her so I wasn’t really impressed by her tale of a big spider hanging from the roof of their tent because if it really was a big spider she wouldn’t have been sat there in the tent calmly asking about it.) Well I need to take it all back, she was in fact just being super brave! Dil got out of his tent and went to have a look and said oh wow that is a big one and I think its deadly, very quickly myself and Stephen jumped out of tent because we were quite close to the tent with the spider in it. It turned out that the spider was in fact deadly however it wasn’t inside the tent built hanging between the two linings of the tent it had obviously with most of the other living things had took refuge from the downpour with us. The villagers had to kill it in case it bit any of the kids etc so it was quickly disposed after about 3 attempts with a broom handle! I would like to acknowledge the courage and bravery of Ruth!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skSPsQVO00k

Mmmm I was just thinking where was Matt while all this was going on well if you can remember we left him behind at the Missionary clinic as he was too ill to travel so that morning we were waiting to hear by radio whether he would be travelling down to join us if he was well enough. More of that later.

So anyway as you can see it was raining quite heavily and we were supposed to be visiting the local school in Tinkerani however no one seemed to be in any hurry due to the rain so we sat round and had a leisurely breakfast. We then had a great excuse to spend some more time with the children in the village which was fantastic – Emily had brought some plasticine which the kids absolutely loved! I also brought them some balloons which really did go down a storm, we saw them playing with these balloons 2 days later still when we left!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2VwjskzsZM

While we were waiting for the rain to stop more importantly we were also waiting for news on the radio of poor old Matthias. We had waited a few hours and we still had no news of Matthias we were all wondering whether we would see him again (today anyway). Then the rain stopped and we packed up and headed over to the local school. The school was a small primary school with a few classrooms, in fact the nearest secondary school to the village was actually the one we had visited in Cuti which was a two hour walk away from where we were. It was fabulous to spend some more time with the children in the village as we watched their performances and saw them learning in the classroom. When we spoke to the teachers they also had a fantastic idea of creating a fish farm at the school on the river so that they could actually use the fish for food as often the kids may not have any food some days and so are hungry. (We will be fundraising for these schools in the future so will be looking for more schools to get involved – watch this space for more information soon)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTnfiTo1mcw

So after a fantastic time at the school when we returned we had a brilliant surprise Matthias had returned and was sat in the camp. The whole team were back together again.  Now it won’t be a surprise to any of you that of course there would be an amusing story about Matthias and what he had been up to for the last 20 hours or so. You may remember that last time we saw him was on our two hour trek to Tinkerani where as he was too ill we left him at a clinic to be looked after by Lazario and also Chambuka from Cuti. Poor Matthias was really ill and slept in one of the clinic beds for most of the day and evening sleeping off the sickness. The clinic was an interesting place as it seemed like no one had been in there for the last 20 years but was full of really good medical stuff. In fact Matthias had been given a lovely cocktail of traditional ashaninkan herbal remedies and also antibiotics and really did make him feel better by the morning. However over night was the night of the storms and unfortunately the clinic was obviously a safe haven for anyone or anything around so in the middle of the night Matthias was joined in the clinic by a large part of giant toads and vampire bats. Don’t worry he wasn’t bitten apart from the bed bugs (you should have seen his back and chest wow they really did have a feast!)

The rest of the afternoon we headed down for a shower – well a bath in the river but wow this was not the same river as yesterday surely? After all the rain it was about a hundred times faster and so much darker in colour. It wasn’t as quite as inviting as the day before however it was nice to get in and get clean. I didn’t hang around at the river though and so returned earlier to camp with Ruth we were really happy about this afterwards as talk about being in the right place at the right time. As we came back to camp we were lucky enough to see a chicken be killed that we were about to eat an hour later! Mmmm nice!

Sorry for interrupting the very long blog on Peru – (In some ways I feel it is turning into a toilet roll, I don’t mean it is like what you use toilet roll for! mmm I seem to be digressing to faeces once again it appears to be inevitable with me! What I mean to say it is just like a very good toilet roll it is soft, very long and thoroughly absorbant or it appears to be by looking at comments by the readers. Pisco Sours, Ponchos & Panpipes PART 8 will be resuming shortly but I interrupt it for a special announcement about how you and your students can save the world in just one minute!

Someone very important and famous once said ‘it only takes a minute girl’ (well actually it was Gary Barlow but if you read about this great opportunity below you will see that he was right!)

There is a global competition being run which I read about in the Guardian newspaper before I went to Peru in the summer called one minute to save the world. The competition is to produce a one minute video and upload it to a website in the hope of winning £1000. The idea behind it is to enable anyone, anywhere, to deliver a short but powerful message to the world on the most important issue of our day – climate change. While I was heading for Peru in August I had already decided I would do this with some of my key stage 3 students as a short project in September however whilst I was experiencing what you may have read in Pisco Sours, Ponchos & Panpipes I suddenly made the connection between this competition and what the charity Cool Earth is trying to do.

One of the easiest ways to ‘save the world’ is to prevent climate change and we can do this by protecting our rainforests. 50 million acres of rainforest – an area nearly the size of the UK – are cut down every year, emitting six billion tonnes of CO2. They are the richest stores of carbon we have and protecting them is the number one priority in tackling climate change. Rainforests are made of carbon ‐ lots and lots of the stuff. When the forest is destroyed, this carbon is released into the atmosphere as CO2 and causes global warming. The trees, plants and soil in each acre of rainforest lock‐up enough carbon to create 260 tonnes of CO2.

Cool Earth is a global charity launched in June 2007 that funds community led protec6on of endangered rainforest. With the support of over 50,000 individual sponsors and companies in 14 different countries, Cool Earth works with rainforest people to ensure rainforest is worth more standing than it is cut.

How it works:

1. Cool Earth operates in six coun6es in South America to identify rainforest that is at greatest risk of destruction in the coming 18 months.

2. Once the risks are identified, Cool Earth works with regional governments and partner NGOs to forge relations with communities whose livelihoods, health and sustainability will be damaged by the deforestation.

3. With their agreement, Cool Earth works to secure the at‐risk rainforest by funding the community to purchase or protect it.

4. All Cool Earth asks is that the forest canopy, its biodiversity and carbon storage are kept intact.

 You may have heard that Cool Earth http://www.coolearth.org/ With Cool Earth you can protect an acre of rainforest for £60.  This will protect 260 tonnes of CO2, 44 mature trees and 190 saplings.  Working with Google, Cool Earth enables you to see the acre that you are protecting.

Actually in fact keep an eye out as they are about to launch their new ‘Cool School’ programme where you can sign your school up to gain access to a network of resources and other schools.

So I decided to create some fully resourced lessons that allowed students to enter this global competition whilst learning all about the work of Cool Earth and also the story of the Ashaninka people.

You can use all of the resources I have created to also get involved and let your students have a chance of winning and learning about this important topic. The lesson plan, resource booklet, video to set the scene and PowerPoint can all be downloaded at http://drop.io/coolearth or from Microsoft’s Innovative Teachers Network by clicking on the following link: http://bit.ly/no4nF

For the second one you will need to sign up however you will then get access to many more excellent resources and materials as well as being able to network with other innovative teachers from around the world.

All the information you need to complete the project is in the resources. I hope you will sign up and have a go with your students. Please let me know by if you would like any help or support. Don’t worry for those not fed up with the Pisco Sours blog there will be a new post tomorrow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btNuIE90oxs

So what I failed to tell you last post when I talked about the amazing time we had at the local school in Cuti meeting the teachers and students that one of our party was missing. No surprises for guessing that it was Matthias, this was after the sheer exhaustion and the meteoric euphoria of the hunting episode. Matthias seemed quite ill probably down to tiredness, heat, dehydration and perhaps a little fear of being left in the rainforest with a bleeding dead Aguti in the dark possibly as Jaguar bate! In addition to all this it hadn’t been a good start to the day for poor Matthias like myself as mentioned in Part 6 he had what I will only call as a toilet issue. Apparently according to him it was one of the worst moments of his life and was completed by him throwing something off the balcony of the hut deep into the rainforest. (That is all I am allowed to say about that)

So at around midday we started to trek to our next destination for a few days the village of Tinkerani we even managed to pack Matthias up and bring him with us. We weren’t sure if he would make it so we planned to stop at a small primary school a 20 minute walk away. The primary school was on the site of an old missionary post that still has a tiny very basic clinic; we were told of an amazing story about the founder of the mission who helped the Ashaninka fight off the Shining Path years before.

As we walked there it was extremely hot and as we arrived we reached for the shade and were once again given an extremely warm welcome from the teachers and students. Have a look at the video below of Daniel the Headteacher and some of the children performing. (You may be able to see what he is wearing round his neck which was given to me as a gift)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVUF3TLq9zA

Once we saw some performances it was then obviously our turn to do a performance, well it is only fair mmm if only we had some talent. Well actually we didn’t need to worry they had already planned it. They asked for 3 of the teachers to take part in an egg and spoon race! Well easy so myself, Clover and Emily stepped forward, I started to feel that this could be like the Olympics it wasn’t just about entertaining the children it was a matter of national pride, it was simply UK vs USA.

Obviously there was no contest Gold/first place went to me! Check out the photo by Clover:

Next up was slightly a little more embarrassing fortunately we had already done something and so Jemma and Stephen had to step up to the plate, quite literally! This is brilliant and you will love watching it! Once again a contest between USA & England:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMFIWhM5XQ

Actually I should also now say that I had to do my own eating contest next which wasn’t planned and not everyone may have noticed. This is because we were all given bowls of fruit and for some reason mine was completely infested with huge ants. I tried to get rid of them but I had no chance within seconds they were all up my arms and I couldn’t just say I wouldn’t eat it so I struggled and ate 5 or 6 pieces before I gave up. I thing I ingested perhaps 71 ants that is a rough guestimate! You may notice that Matthias wasn’t around he was put in the clinic and not surprisingly ended up staying there over night and of course out of that came another amazing story which you will hear in later posts. (I was then reminded of my first conversation with Matthias as we woke up next to each other on our first morning in Lima without ever meeting as he had arrived in the middle of the night. He said that ‘if anything bad or stupid will happen to anyone on the trip then it would be him’ and you know he was right! Well actually probably the only thing he did say that was right.) After the fun the kids were allowed to go home early and we spoke to the teachers about what they needed etc once again there was a massive need for fundraising. I will talk about all this in a future post.

We then started to leave for Tinkerani – on the way through we stopped at Cesar’s house and met his wife who had just given birth to their twelfth child at 48 years old and she looked fantastic! The trek through rainforest was amazing! (I seem to be saying that too often in these posts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17JXMiByeR4

After two hours we arrived in the village and we were greeted by Noami who is the community elder and around 80 years old and we also met our host Haimi. I also had a bizarre moment when we saw about ten people sat around watching a DVD player – which was a really strange sight. They were being shown a documentary that they starred in for Channel 4.

We then ran off to the river to have a swim this was lovely compared to previous rivers very slow and quite clear, however after a swim and a wash we had to rush back to put up our tents before it got dark and before we got soaked as big grey clouds began to appear.

Make sure you check out the next post to hear about a proper tropical storm.

(Photo of Emily with school students)

Now I know it isn’t appropriate to talk about your toilet habits so if you’re not interested in that type of thing or perhaps are eating right now then please skip this next paragraph. Whilst at Cuti we were introduced to how we would use the facilities, obviously so much easier for a man who could just walk out in the bush. However for the females and for the males of the group when they needed more than a number one there was a small thatched cubicle that contained a letter box sized hole in the ground. Without going into too many details my own experience and that of Matthias’s was not good and we chose to not visit this again. I decided to take a machete and walk away from the village to find a suitable spot.

Ok now we have the toilet out the way, it is time to hear an amazing hunting story. Instead of me telling you it I think it is best to watch the video clip below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91lkqCocO4w

What the story doesn’t tell you is about when Matthias returned home at 11pm and everyone was in bed asleep that there was lots of shouting and bragging going on and a few hours later he developed a really bad illness which took him out of action for a while (more of this in later blogs). Also I feel I should point out that in the video you see Matthias taking the first bite of the poor Aguti and he is in fact a vegetarian!

The plan for today was to go to the local village school and meet the students and teachers. Then to make our way to the next village we would stay in for a few days but to stop off on the way at another school to break up the 2 hour trek.

At the village school there were around 70 students aging from around 10-15 years of age, this was made up of about 3 classes and 3 classrooms. As we arrived the students put on a performance of music, dancing and poetry. (See the videos below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLBuLKkrsWE

It was awesome to be there with the teachers and students of the school, we then introduced ourselves and talked about why we were there. We then got into groups with the students and we were asked to do a short presentation on about their thoughts of what they need to protect their environment and area. This was fantastic to work with the students and although there was a language barrier we got by. They obviously spoke Ashaninkan (if that is how you say it) but some Spanish and I could speak a little Spanish so we got by. See the video clip below of Berta who is 15 years old the main message is that the students were saying that they need help to protect their own environment, that is is so important to protect the rainforest not just for themselves but for the whole of the planet. They were fully aware that the keeping and protecting the rainforest is vital in tackling climate change.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lwHNAhpi7M

After the group work we were getting ready to go so I sat down with the students and got out a netbook to show them pictures & videos of my school, students, teachers, where I live and my family. They loved looking at these and I was explaining them all in my best Spanish. There was quite a crowd and lots of giggling and laughing (this was definitely one of my favourite parts of the trip!) I also gave the students a flip camera to go and film some of the other students.

(Photos by Clover Hicks)

The students loved the technology, they have one laptop in the school which is mostly used by the teachers but there are problems with this as they don’t have regular electricity. We spoke to the teachers about this afterwards and they would love to have a solar power facility (which is actually relatively cheap) so they could have regular electricity. They also would love a few more laptops so that each teacher could have one to prepare lessons and therefore students could use it in class. Although they wouldn’t have access to the internet this could be fantastic for them and also possibly a couple of camera after seeing the joy from the one they were using from me. We will definitely be doing some fundraising for these schools so if you are at all interested in doing any fundraising with your own school for this then please get in touch with me and we can perhaps jointly do some fundraising.