Planet Saver Brainstorms!

The Findon Planets Savers (FPS) have been working towards becoming student-centered and weekly programs run, based on their ideas in collaboration with the teachers feedback from the PD. On Thursday the 21st of August the FPS came together to brainstorm their ideas for future projects continuing in to term 4.

Below are the outcomes of the student collaboration session done today...

All students passionately discussed creating a Documentary of their journey in becoming a sustainable school. You can see their focus will be on Waste, Water, Biodiversity and Energy. It was discussed that each member of FPS is to be involved, taking on different roles. These roles included an editor, script writer(s), camera operations and interviewers.

Here you can see the students are concerned about a Compost and Waste campaign to a whole school approach. As part of preparing for a waste audit they decided signs to save water and paper were needed throughout the school to prompt users. Badges were thought of to give to monitors in the classrooms, which would be made by the FPS.

 For their Energy Campaign, the theme of constructing signs was deemed important to be consistent with the waste campaign. The idea of presentations and videos at assembly was discussed that included themes such as solar power, having competitions on energy saving and showing people how much energy they actually use in daily tasks.


















Further and NEW developments for Term 4

Below, the students discussed the existing Butterfly Garden. They were enthusiastic about having monitors watering the plants every week using recycled water and planning how, when and who will keep developing this wonderful garden. Also below is the year 2/3 Bushfood Garden that needs to be maintained and a new garden outside the 2/3 classrooms that will be a new development. Their ideas consisted of a design, plant selection, weed management and school permissions. 

Professional Development with Findon Primary School

The La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary provides professional development workshops to teachers through their education department. Findon Primary School staff required further opportunity to explore and understand their School Environmental Management Plan (SEMP).

During this session teachers were able to express their concerns and ideas to make Findon a more sustainable school through collaboration of their ideas. This included organizing ideas from most important to least by opinion and also discussing where funding should be spent and why.

The central idea of the PD was to unify ideas across all year levels and establish solutions to work towards using the resources available.

In this post are the collaborations by the teachers and a Prezi document with the results of their ideas and understandings!

Access the  here Prezi Document

Incursion: Water Is An Essential Resource

La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary recognises that teaching students that Water Is An Essential Resource will develop their understanding of water conservation and ways of use.


This month, Milgate Primary School expressed an interest in a unique incursion teaching about water conservation, usage and what it means for water to be a finite resource. This detailed incursion is hands on and based on inquiry learning and group participation.



This incursion gives students the opportunity to explore the complex concept of water as a finite resource. Students will develop an understanding that world’s water is limited by use that leads to conclusions about water conservation. Students learn to speak and think of water as an essential resource for all life. Exploration takes place through discussion, visual images, group work and physical representation. The whole-part-whole approach to this incursion gives the opportunity for students to observe activities and ask inquiry based questions about the content. It also allows for the development of these ideas and practise of these ideas. This incursion is designed to scaffold in to higher order thinking both independently and in groups. 

A unique feature of this incursion is exploring macro invertebrates that live in healthy waterways and why they are essential to determining water health.

Water Is An Essential Resource is aimed at year 3 and 4 students. Resources include looking at macro invertebrates through microscopes, to scale exploration of where water can be found and what is available for human consumption, group activities on water usage plus a post trip class water pledge assessment exercise.

 Curriculum Links that Water Is An Essential Resource covers include

AusVELS Focus: Safely use appropriate materials, tools or equipment to make and record observations, using formal measurements and digital technologies as appropriate (ACSIS055) Science involves making predictions and describing patterns and relationships (ACSHE050) Measure, order and compare objects using familiar metric units of length, mass and capacity (ACMMG061) ACARA Curriculum Links Science knowledge helps people to understand the effect of their actions (ACSHE051) Living things can be grouped on the basis of observable features and can be distinguished from non-living things (ACSSU044) Living things, including plants and animals, depend on each other and the environment to survive (ACSSU073) Natural and processed materials have a range of physical properties; These properties can influence their use (ACSSU074) Safely use appropriate materials, tools or equipment to make and record observations, using formal measurements and digital technologies as appropriate (ACSIS066)