Climate Change Information for 3BGEO & Science

I've come across a great resource which would be perfect for use within unit 3B Geography.  It's a booklet called The Science of Climate Change: Questions and Answers.  Its written by the Australian Academy of Science, which also means that lots of the statistics and impacts are focussed on Australia too.

Its very readable, whilst also being informative and discusses the answers to 7 key climate change questions:

1. What is Climate Change?
2. How has the Earth's climate changed in the distant past?
3. How has the Earth's climate changed in the recent past?
4. Are human activities causing climate change?
5. How do we expect climate to evolve in the future?
6. What are the consequences of Climate Change?
7. How do we deal with the uncertainty in the science?

Its really perfect for the 1st few lessons of 3b Gegraphy on climate change and would be useful in science too.  Lucy

National Recycling Week 8 -14th November

In 3 weeks time its National Recycling Week.

If your school needs a kick start to get its recyling program off the ground then this could be the opportunity that it needs.  Its organised by Planet Ark and they have got a few ideas to get you going.  Why not organise a Swap Party for your class, year group or even whole school.  Everyone brings in good quality clothes they don't wear and get to exchange them for ones they want.  Everyone pays a fee to enter so you could raise money for a good cause or for a school recycling program.

 This page on our website gives you a step by step guide on how to set up a recycling program in your school.

We've also got lots of resources on our website can help get it into lessons too.   In  'i change' students look at all the materials in their phones or MP3 players, how quickly they're running out and the issues around recycling them.  They then organise a schoolwide phone recycle.  If you taught this next week a collection could happen in National Recycling Week. 

That's a Society and Environment lesson (although it could easily be a science one too).  In Home Economics the Food Waste Module examines packaging.  In the 'Smart Cookie' lesson students sort packaging into recyclable or not and look at alternatives, which don't need recycling.  The whole module addresses the issue of food and resource waste (as you probably guessed from the title) and would be applicable to the week.

Or usse our recycling powerpoint to launch a poster competition at a school assembly.

So Reduce - Reuse - Recycle - and enjoy it.  I'm a bit of an opshop fiend, I am just so pleased when I find some new clothes - they're reused, but still lovely, not expensive and the money goes to a good cause and its fun finding things.  Find your way to enjoy it and get your studetns enjoying it too.

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)

Beaches & bags

Just watch this fantastic video about the life of a plastic bag.  I know it doesn't sound good but it really is one of the best short films I've seen.

It would be a fanastic resource to use to explore issues of sustainability and waste in many areas.  I think it provides a great way in to English, very obviously media studies as the filming, imagery and story are very striking. It could also fit into religious education or philosophy as well as Society and Environment.



Here's the synopsis:

This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.

In the end, the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean, into the tides, and out into the Pacific Ocean trash vortex — a promised nirvana where it will settle among its own kind and gradually let the memories of its maker slip away.

This video could be combined with a clean up.  I've just found out about the organisation Tangaroa Blue at www.oceancare.org.au.  They are focussed on cleaning up coasts, getting rid of all the plastic waste that endangers wildlife and generally makes the coast look rubbish.  They help organise clean ups across australia.  Students can take part, record what they collect and send their data Tangaroa to be included in their research projects.  Tongara Blue have also produced some teaching resoruces to go with this for schools in WA.  Contact them for the CD.  Its called Ocean Full of Plastic: marine debris education resource for WA schools.  There's a beach clean up for the SW organised for the 8th & 9th October if you want to get involved.

I've also found a podcast from Costing the Earth about this too.  Dr. Alice Roberts investigates the discovery of the World's largest plastic waste patch in the South Atlantic and asks what we can do to solve the problem of aqatic plastic.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v1qtn

Lots of links to other great resources about this issue on this page too. 

Podcasts - so many things I want to listen too, so little time.

If you want to find out more about sustainability issues it doesn't all have to be hard work. I've taken to susbscribing to podcasts from radio programs that I like, putting them on my Ipod and then listening to them as I drive. Just go onto the webpage, click susbscribe and new episodes will be downloaded to your itunes everyweek, when you open itunes and have the internet on. I find them really interesting, they get you thinking and you could easily find you use them in your lessons to get discussions going.

Here are a few of my favourite sustainability related ones:

Costing the Earth This is a program from the BBC radio 4 (my favourite radio station which I miss alot!). This is what its about... ' Man's effect on the environment, questioning accepted truths, challenging those in charge and reporting on progress towards improving the world. Presenters, Tom Heap and Dr Alice Roberts, travel the UK and the world in search of solutions to the challenges facing the natural world and the people and wildlife that live in it.'

Future Tense This is from ABC radio National. Its not specifically about sustainability but its is about future thinking and so often covers sustainability for lots of different perspectives eg.

• Future Governance - In a world where issues like climate change, population and migration are challenging the way we organise our societies. How should we address some of these issues? And what affect will they have on the future of governance? or
• Resilience Science - Many scientists around the world believe that we need to focus on ways of making our urban and natural environments more resilient. So what is the idea of resilience science? And how can it help deal with future environmental challenges?

Or try these podcasts from Oxford University which Richard just found, you can't susbscribe but can down load any you find interesting, just right click and 'save link as'. Its dangerous though you might find you want ot download most of them and will have no time in your life for much else!!!! I just downloaded one by Howard stern on the economics of climate change but there are so many other relevant ones it would be hard to list but start by searching the social sciences division.

Happy Listening!

Let us know if there are any other good ones you know of.

Dilemmas, Dilemmas

I was really excited to hear from my colleague Richard that we are hoping to be able to offer workshops with the team from www.dilemmas.net.au. He met with Lily Settlemeyer from Curtin University, who has been instrumental in developing these and they are keen for us to help promote their resources for use by schools.

No problem! I think they are great and by chance (well not totally, we discovered them after a meeting with Jenny from SPICE) had already included one in an Ecosystems/ Biodiversity/Fieldwork module that we are developing for science called 'Know Your Place'. We've used the swamp tortoise one in this case. These are my notes from the lesson plan about why these resources are so good to use. They are exactly the type of learning experiences that we think are best for Educating about sustainability.

www.dilemmas.net.au

There are a series of dilemmas on this website which have been developed in collaboration with scientists in WA universities and the SPICE program. They tie in perfectly with our philosophy for Sustainable education. This is why:

• Enquiry based; students ask relevant and interesting questions about the world around them.
• Decision making, students make decisions based on the information that they have at the time but are willing to reconsider when they learn new facts.
• Values education, students consider other students points of view and respect the fact that others make think differently to them and try to understand the reasons why. This can help them to make persuasive arguments for their case.
• Collaborative approach, students work together to discuss their decisions and must respect the opinions of others in their group.
• Controversial issues, the topics allow students to examine the complexity of decisions made in everyday life about environmental/scientific/social issues and to understand how these issues are contested and can be resolved.
• Relevant engaging topics; they include farming and housing development on wetlands, endangered swamp tortoises, whether or not to save beached whales and farmers decisions in relation to changing climate.

Science sustainability resources from UPD8

UPD8 is a great website. Its got loads of curriculum and resources for science, and the lessons are really inoovative covering the usual topics in absorbing ways. I just looked at one where pupils were given the task of coordinating a car chase stunt for a hollywood movie, enabling them to learn about the relationship between speed, distance and time and inter and extraploation of graphs. On a specifically sustainability slant.....

They also have a series of lessons called climate futures. These cover energy use - which is the best present to give mum for her birthday?, eco-friendly motorbikes - write a review for a magazine, food recycling etc. You have to register to download the resources but these ones and lots of others on the site are free.

Lucy