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)

Want to win $50?

Feedback Competition

We want to make your life easier and provide you with great resources that save you time, that you enjoy teaching, that engage your classes and get your pupils thinking and acting for sustainability. We hope we are doing this but need your feedback so that we can improve what we offer and reach more teachers. We know that this takes time and effort on your part so we’ve come up with a plan to reward your generosity.

Win a $50 voucher from ecostore www.todae.com

How to enter.

1. Download and teach one of the lessons from our website.
2. Answer our feedback questions – online or email.
3. Put your name and email address on it to be entered into our monthly draw.

How to improve your chances of winning.

1. Teach more than one lesson and fill out a form for each.

2. Enter every month, we will draw on the last day of the month.

We welcome all feedback; positive, negative, new ideas or adaptations. We want to improve what we are doing and produce lessons that you really want to teach and that are easy and practical for you to access and implement.

Save time and answer online.

Or email hotrock@thehotrock.org.au and answer the following questions

• Which module and or lessons did you use?

• Which year and type of class did you use it with?
• Please write any comments about; how you used it, adapted it, any problems you had with it, what you & students enjoyed (or not) etc.
• Was it easy to find the lessons, topics etc that you wanted? Any suggestions to improve the usability of our website?
• Are there any other topics, types of resources, services that you think we can provide to help you educate for sustainability?
• Thanks for your help. If you’d like to be entered into a monthly draw to win a $50 voucher to shop at www.todae.com please give you name and email address here:

Name: Email:

We're giving you a head start for the 1st draw which will take place on 31st October.

That's 6 weeks to get teaching and feeding back to us (well 2 weeks hols but you could do the feedback then).