Know your Place - Great new Biodiversity Science module

We've got a new science module up on our website 'Know your Place'.  Yey.  It was developed with Trish Gardener, who's got a huge knowledge of local flora and fauna and conservation issues around WA. 

2010 is the year of Biodiversity and thats what this module is all about.  That and getting out of the classroom and looking after your locality.   Its centred around fieldwork to measure the biodiversity of a bushland or wetland area near your school.  These areas are likely to have experienced many different impacts form people just walking over the area, possible littering to fire, invasive species and clearing.  Students assess these and work out ways to help improve the biodiversity of the site and manage it better.  We are hoping that classes/schools will find and adopt sites near them and be able to take on atleast some of mananagement activities.  This could involve producing information boards, setting up volunteer groups or just clearing litter. 

We've produced all the materials you need to teach it along with a fieldwork booklet and other worksheets for the students.

The module also examines why biodiversity is important, allows them to play the ABC's excellent Catchment Detox game putting their ideas into practice on a large scale, uses the a dilemma (see my post about them here) and ends by looking at the importance of biodiversity in agriculture using the 'Seed Hunter' video.

Let us know how you go with teaching it, remember we're giving away $50 every month in our feedback draw.  Go to this site to answer questions and be automatically entered.  (see this post for more details)