Year 5 - The final straw

This week, the Final Straw Foundation visited Holy Family to talk to us about pollution in our oceans. Did you know that the ocean helps us breathe? The ocean produces oxygen through marine plants and scientists believe that between 50-80% of our oxygen is produced from the ocean! After our assembly the Final Straw Foundation held workshops in the Year 5 classes. We listened intently about pollution in our oceans and learnt about microplastics. Did you know that small microplastics less than 5 mm in size are called Nurdles?

We thought about single-use plastic and how we can try to replace it -it takes over 500 years to break down plastic wrappers for essentially a 2 minute snack - so we really want to try and focus on replacing single-use plastic, for example, by using reusable bags. We sieved sand from plastic found from our local beaches to categorize microplastics, secondary plastics and natural materials. This links perfectly with our English topic where we are writing a persuasive speech to try and change our listener's mindset about pollution in our oceans.