Ms. Derival’s chemistry honors students can choose to be Science Ambassadors through the Green Chemistry Storytellers and/or Public Engagers tracks. Some teams are also disseminating info on systems thinking tools through their lessons/activities. Last Friday, Sona, Anita and Hannah visited a preschool at the Chelmsford Education Center. They taught fourteen 4/5 year old students about biodegradable plastic. Anita drew images of sea animals, plastic, and arrows which the students first colored in. Then they arranged their drawings to understand the life cycle of plastics and need for a plastic alternative. The students then helped make a biodegradable plastic film, which they’ll later observe in a classroom compost container. Hopefully they will show us a behavior-over-time graph (BOTG) of its degradation when we visit them again next semester. There will be four more teams doing public engagement work this semester. Two teams are going to visit 8th graders in Nashua, another team is going to Dave Maier’s 6th grade class in Chelmsford, and another team is web conferencing with an elementary school in North Carolina. Earlier this week, Jacob and Isabela visited a middle school in Nashua to teach their 8th graders how green chemistry helped to solve a mosquito larvacide resistance problem in Brazil. The lesson includes having the students read an original story that Isabela and Jacob wrote, and an iceberg modeling activity. Next week, another team of students will share a different green chemistry success story with the same 8th graders and do some feedback loop work with them. The other two teams are going out in January. Next semester, another string of outreach events will occur. They hope to visit an elementary school in Lowell and they have already been invited back to the preschool and World Academy (Nashua middle school). Nice work Ms. Derival and students!