We started by talking about holidays and places we knew about in the world. We found them on a world map and a couple of us had been to really hot places. We talked about where hot places are and why the weather is sunnier and warmer than where we live. 

We imagined what it would be like to create a Mantle story somewhere tropical - like an island in the Indian Ocean. 

We represented the island. The children make a space on the floor and lay out blue fabric to represent the island. Then everyone placed a short piece of string down on blue fabric as the coastline. Each piece of string had to touch the piece next to it but could take any “wavy form” they liked.

If we fly a drone high up above this island, we can see it looks very green on one half and then as we fly further across the other half appears yellowy brown.  Along the middle of the island it looks different again – mountains. Our island took shape with trees in the "jungly" side and cacti in the "deserty" side. 

The island has won awards for its sustainable approaches and people love to visit because the people living and working there really care about the environment and its future. It has its own solar farm which uses the power of the sun to create electricity and even has wind turbines in the ocean. When we zoomed in to the wind turbines, we could see a name "Future Fuels Solutions". 

There is an important signpost on the island pointing in different directions to jungle pods this way, desert pods, reception, lake, port, etc. 

It says Eco village – we had to find out what this meant and created representations of eco friendly pods for tourists. 

The Future Fuels Solutions Team has experts working around the world and are always trying to find better ways to  generate power. An email arrived at the headquarters  asking our Eco Engineers to fix the solar panels on the island of Shivaedweepa . They wanted  to meet to discuss their energy provision as they have heard that broken solar panels are not being recycled. We created the solar panels outside of our drama work and invented lots of problems!

Before we decided to travel to the island we [Future Fuels Solutions] met the Eco Village managers online. It seemed that the island was not overly happy with the solar panels situation. We have already done so much good with this island and now they are pushing for more. They want to attract the environmentally conscious tourists of the future. Could we help provide a more reliable and longer lasting source of clean energy of the future? 

The team decided to go to the island to see for themselves what was going on and plan what to do next. As they were waiting in the meeting room to meet with the Eco Village managers they overheard a conversation going on outside the room. 

Two housekeepers were going about their duties when they spotted a sign on the meeting room door. 

"We can’t get into the meeting room until after lunch by the looks of it."

"Yes I think they are having a meeting about the broken solar panels  - hopefully something can be done about that quickly – we have the sustainable award reassessment coming up – if they haven’t sorted out a replacement energy source by then, then who knows what will happen!"

"The Eco Village will be in big trouble if we don’t receive that award – its one of the main reasons why visitors come to visit us here – if there are no visitors then that means no jobs for us all who live on the island.."

"Yes lets hope this team know what they are doing  - those solar panels need to be replaced, they haven’t been working properly for years. Though I have heard its going to cost a lot of money and the old ones can’t be recycled.. that won’t look good when the sustainable award people come."

"But what are the other options? More wind turbines? They would have to dig up the island plus they look awful…"

"I completely agree about the wind turbines being an eye sore – I heard visitors commenting on how awful they looked yesterday..."

"Lets just hope that these Future Fuel solutions people have some better ideas.. or our Eco Village could be in serious trouble…"

We paused our meeting to talk about what this meant for us as a team.

Two of our team arrived a little late to our meeting.  They had been delayed in the UK on their current project - wearing a badge with an H on. What is the H? Why do our colleagues seem so distracted?

We froze them so that we could take a peak at the folder and documents they had.

Is it possible that the project they have been working on might be something to do with an exciting, clean energy source…?

We stopped the meeting and asked our colleagues about the project. They gave us a few documents to look at which mentioned hydrogen. 

At this point, we had real life chemical engineering students Aaron and Diyaa in class with us. Along with Iris, they are working on a real life Hydrogen Academy Project and they were able to tell us that hydrogen could be the clean energy source of the future in real life. We thought about using this idea in our Mantle. 

Out of the drama, we did some learning about hydrogen and found out that water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell. This creates energy and heat and the only emission is water. Wow! 

Back in role, we mentioned this to the Eco Village managers. They were excited to hear this, but time was against them. Could we come up with a plan for the island before the eco award reassessment? 

We suggested that a hydrogen powered bus might be good for the island - it could take visitors on tours without the harmful gases from exhausts of other vehicles. We spoke to the team in London and they agreed to ship a bus to the island for them to try. 

However, we then received an email to say it would take a minimum of 21 days to ship out a bus! They could fly out some fuel cells in the meantime...

Elsewhere on the island...

Some people say that there is a special tree on the jungle side…

What if we could zoom in to that tree? We used drama to see what we could find out. The children watched as a shrine was created at the base of the tree - a puja tray and murtis. 

They saw an adult in role talk about thanks to the gods – naming them; saying the aum sound. They placed some red powder on each god’s head. The children watched without interacting with the role.

The people of the island were concerned that too many tourists were finding the tree, but not knowing how important it is for the island. They decided to create a "workshop" for the visitors. So out of the drama, we learned about Hindu worship and then with some of us in role as islanders and some as tourists, we explained the daily worship of Hindus. 

Whilst there, we imagined seeing and hearing a range of tropical birds. Lots of tourists visit the island to see the amazing birds and we created the postcards on sale in the Eco Village gift shop. We did some art work outside of the Mantle where we drew nests using ink and created them using clay and found materials. 

It was very wet on this side of the island and as we learned about the climate and the living things there, we realised in was a rainforest. Out of the Mantle, we had been learning about states of matter including the water cycle. We found out, using the Amazon rainforest as a case study,  that in rainforests the water cycle is speeded up and it rains every afternoon. 

Back in role as the Future Fuels Solutions team, we needed to "clear our heads" because the problems were mounting up. We know that taking a walk in nature is good for wellbeing and so we represented this in drama. We came to the place of the tree and found an islander there. We waited at a distance in order to show them respect at their sacred place. 

However, they noticed us and said we looked troubled. We explained what was going on. They took some time to think and asked Ganesha for help. Then they said that one answer might lie in the past...

It turns out that stored away in a spare Pod were solar cookers - but what were these? A film had be made on the island in 2007 showing how they were used. They looked like huge shiny satellite dishes reflecting the heat of the sun onto cooking pots and cooking food without the need to generate any other power. The very first solar panels! Amazing! 

The islanders agreed to us using these up temporarily in a bid to impress the eco award judges. We worked together to set them up and try them out. 

We decided to put them on the dry, desert side of the island. Also, outside of the Mantle we used our science knowledge of the water cycle to work out why it doesn't rain on this side of the island. We used a case study from the Atacama desert in Chile to find out that the mountains force the moist air upwards and create a rain shadow. 

Then we couldn't actually believe when only a couple of days later when we were watching Newsround we saw that it had rained in the Atacama desert for the first time in years and years and flowers had bloomed there!!!!

On our way back to the meeting room, we noticed a sign at the Eco Village. We worked out that it might be linked to Hinduism because of the tree and when we did some research we found out it was Diwali. However, we are very concerned about the sustainability of such a festival…

The Eco Village managers convinced us that the festival was sustainable and would not harm the wildlife on the island. They told us that they recycle decorations from previous years and that the fireworks are low noise ones. We looked forward to joining them to celebrate. 

Meanwhile a special delivery arrived for our team. The note on the packaging said that it contained Bacon fuel cells. It also said that we were to contact Peter Clarke by Zoom ASAP! We were expecting hydrogen fuel cells and although we noticed an H2 symbol on the box, we hadn’t heard of a Bacon cell before. We had some questions for Peter. 

Peter and his colleagues asked for our help. The hydrogen fuel cells sent to us are named after the inventor - Francis Tom Bacon. However interest in them is fading and Peter wants us to help spread information about them. He told us that there was a document file about Tom Bacon inside the box and asked us to take a look. We couldn’t believe it when we discovered that people say without Tom astronauts would not have been able to step foot on the moon!! 

After examining the files on Francis Thomas Bacon we created some drama where we were the photographers talking to him at different stages of his life and about his work. This meant we could explore our questions and really think about what we had learned about him. 

Meanwhile, The Festival of Lights was taking place on the island and after learning about the story of Rama and Sita we represented the occasion using drama. 
As we walked along the pathway of lights in role as the Fuels team, we shared a thought about Diwali. 

Then the day we had been looking forward to - our visit to Tyseley Energy Park!

Iris, Diyaa, Aaron, Eve and Jen from Bertz Associates had been working hard behind the scenes to arrange a visit for us. We we’re looking forward to learning more about hydrogen as a clean energy source in real life! 
Children as young a Year 4 don’t usually visit, but we had a special invitation as part of the HyAcademy EU Project. 
We were so excited!