Teacher Resources

Students brainstorm what they think they know about small animals living in different places where their needs are met. Students will then investigate a selected habitat e.g. school compost, vegetable garden, garden bed or tree lot.

Students need practice at sitting quietly and using their senses to look around them. Oncethey have attuned to their surroundings they are more likely to be able to make detailedobservations. It is important to get to know the country you are part of and spend time inquiet contemplation.

This is the first lesson in a series of four. Over the teaching sequence, students will learn the features of an Arachnid and their habitats as per the Science Curriculum. They will design a spider and its habitat and construct it using craft and recyclable materials as per the Design Technologies Curriculum and STEM teaching and learning ideals. 

We are checking in to see that students understand if things are living or non-living. The idea of “product of
a living thing” or “once living” could be mentioned but not necessary. We would explore the school yard for
living and non-living things.

Students will work to understand their impacts on the world and evaluate their footprint in terms of plastic recycling. They will look at alternatives to their use of plastic and investigate alternative pathways for the plastic which they produce by way of their school food choices. 

In this lesson students reflect on the wildest place they have ever been. This will differ enormously. Some students will recount bush walks and camping trips, others will reflect on trips abroad with their families. For some students, the local park is the wildest place
they have ever been.

During the Australian Alps Bush Blitz, I observed that most of the Scientists on the expedition interacted with soil. 

I have found that my students really enjoy lessons we teach outside. Teaching nature journaling to my students has given me the opportunity to teach across the curriculum; subjects including science, literacy, arts, and numeracy play a key role in nature journaling.

Students will think about the importance of soil, and look closely at soil samples.

This series of lessons provides students the chance to collect, preserve and store samples in a scientific way. They then try and identify the species they have collected and label them as such.

Students use their prior knowledge to identify areas of higher biodiversity within their schoolground. They learn a common scientific surveying methodology, identify invertebrates and determine the number of different species present in this habitat.

This unit uses the species discovered through the Bush Blitz program to inspire and engage students. The lessons in this unit are designed to meet the principles of place-based learning. Place-based learning takes advantage of geography to create meaningful, authentic and engaging personalised learning activities for students.

Classification is a system used by scientists to group and sort living and non-living thingsbased on characteristics they share. Sorting things in this way helps us better understandthe world we live in.

The first of these two lessons provides an introduction to the human impact on food webs while incorporating Indigenous perspectives and knowledge. The second activity is designed to allow students to experience and investigate Hardin’s (1968) tragedy of the commons phenomenon. It addresses the misconception that there is an unlimited amount of fish in the world’s oceans; when in fact fish are a renewable resource only if appropriate numbers remain to reproduce and fulfill a given species role in a food web.

To introduce students to classification keys and the reason we classify organisms. Students will create a new branch onto an existing classification key, and create an organism that has all of the required traits (based on the existing dichotomous key) and the new trait from the added branch.

This lesson has been designed in the context of a small class (10-15) of year 7’s situated in the Adelaide Hills (a bushy area with pine forests, native parks, etc.)

Natural vegetation has been removed to make way for a variety of land uses including agriculture, forestry, mining and urban development. Some natural ecosystems have been more heavily impacted than others.This will have implications for biodiversity. Through this lesson, students will develop an understanding of changed in land usage in south-west Western Australia. This activity could be altered to suit other regions of Australia.

Students will have the opportunity to learn about animals that have been impacted by the change land usage in the south west of Western Australia. Through this, they will also learn about conservations status levels, appreciate the importance of the red list, and develop and understanding if conservation programmes are in place or not, that assist the species under study.

In these two lessons, students will understand what is meant by ‘Citizen Science’, research the breadth of Citizen Science opportunities, and understand how these also provide an opportunity for travel. They will be asked to contribute to effective involvement in a collabortative and co-operative team, to deliver a quality presentation.

This lesson introduces the concept of scientific illustration through Beatrix Potters’ own journey. Students then explore their school yard considering what they often ignore and observing nature. Students will be required to keep a folio over the course of this topic. 

ClimateWatch has partnered with Cool Australia to build lessons in the areas of mathematics, geography, and science. The lessons focus on phenology, climate change and citizen science and are all linked to the Australian Curriculum and syllabus.

A sequence of four lessons. The first lesson provides the foundational knowledge and understanding required by students to meaningfully participate in the remainder of the lessons. In this lesson, students will discover the answer to the questions: What is biodiversity? What are species? In the second and third lessons, after learning what species are and the importance of biodiversity, students will discover the species of plants and animals that are present within their school grounds. In the last lesson, they will represent the data visually (e.g. pie charts, column graphs) using digital technologies.

The lands of the Ewamian People are shaped by many rivers, cutting through rocks thatare billions of years old. While we may think of rivers as gentle flows of water, they can beviolent places where rocks are both formed and destroyed.

It is estimated there are 435,000-510,000 undiscovered species in Australia. 45% of the land and over 90% of our marine areas have never been comprehensively surveyed by scientists, leaving a massive gap in our knowledge of Australia’s biodiversity and the impacts of land use. Bush Blitz is a project aiming to categorise as many plant and animal species as possible to protect our biodiversity by fostering sustainable land management.

This lesson introduces marine ecosystems, in particular a soft sand ecosystem and takes students through
the process of collecting species for examination.

Over the past 200 years there has been a significant loss in Australia’s biodiversity. Whilestudents can not hope to tackle issues covering large areas of Australia, they can make asignificant contribution to local biodiversity issues. The teacher will use biodiversity to engagestudents with real scientific challenges to empower students to take action to protect andrestore local biodiversity.

The MangroveWatch citizen science program provides tools, methods and training to assist students and the wider community help scientists gather data on the extent and health of Australia’s mangroves and salt marshes, known collectively as tidal wetlands. 

The lands of the Ewamian People provide homes to many different species of spider.Studying these gives us insight into evolution by natural selection and hereditary.

This lesson introduces students to quadrating and the use of the formula to calculate approximate population size and density.