The Butterfly Game

The Butterfly Game

Creating Bright Flowers

We've been having a ball with the Findon Biodiversity Group (FBG) at Findon Primary School. This weeks session was all about pollination and how butterflies are important in our ecosystems. Over the past few weeks, students have been creating wooden cutouts that replicate a flowers function (bright petals, nectar storage) and we've now installed them on garden stakes and put them in the ground.

At lunch time (and note this is a purely voluntary activity) we've been getting around 20 - 30 students joining in to help create the Butterfly Garden.

The Butterfly Garden Plan

The Findon Biodiversity Group (FBG) have been referring to their garden plan and putting a huge range of butterfly attracting plants into the area. 'We're hoping that butterfly habitat will attract the butterflies' says Anamika.

Collecting Nectar

Today, we worked with all the grade 5 students (Grade 4's were on camp) and had the first attempt at running the Butterfly Game. Students were placed into teams of 4-6 and equipped with a pipette (Nectar sucker) and a bucket (Nectar storage unit).

Butterflies (students) then took it in turns to race down to the flowers and collect a pipette full of nectar (colored water) and then take it back to their 'home'. After 5 minutes, the teams gathered together and measured their nectar.





An interesting spin off from this game was the FBG leaders taking control of the running of the game and providing good educational context for the running of a great team activity.

'We're creating a butterfly garden to attract the indigenous butterflies by using indigenous plants that are good for butterflies and other animals' said James. 'Yes, and this game demonstrates how butterflies are important for pollination' said Emily.

 

- Andrew Stocker (Senior Coordinator Education Services)

Sustainability Game

Sustainability Game

Findon Primary School played host to yet another educational experiment in August 2013. The La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary visited the school for a session on Sustainability. The school had been undertaking an inquiry unit on economics and wanted something to tie their activities into sustainability.

So, the Sustainability Game was launched. This game was very similar to online games that students can play on their own, but we wanted something that would engage students in conversations around sustainability. The concept was quite simple, but the ideas and process was quite complex, so we were a bit concerned as to how the grade 4/5 students (and teachers) would take to the game.

The game follows a seasonal timeline where students are able to place a component of a new town onto a 'blank' patch of land - in this case a blank piece of A0 butchers paper. Students take turns adding, houses, parks, shops, council chambers, factories and pretty much anything they think would belong in a town.

Set Up

The students start with a playing board (butchers paper) and set up all the playing cards in piles. They are allocated $1500 and 200ml of the three main resources (Materials, Energy and Water). A marker is placed on the Play Card in the 'Summer' position.

Play starts by the first student in the team (of 4-6 students) placing an infrastructure card on the play board. Resources are then subtracted from their supply and discarded in the pollution bucket. The market is then moved to the next season and the second student takes a turn.

The catch is students a limited amount of resources in which to construct their town and decisions need to be made about minimising resource use or impact.

For example a standard house will cost 10ml in resources, 10ml in electricity and $50k to create, whereas an Eco house cost a bit more, but running costs are much less.

The Purpose

This is not a game for determining a winner or loser, it is not a game where a team of students create the ideal 'ecotopia'... It is a game that is designed to draw out conversation and negotiation skills in students and promote a team approach to problem solving. Along the way there is loads of manipulation and calculation skills, so it is great in developing students understanding of measurement.

Student and Teacher Feedback

The most significant (unexpected) feedback on our first test run was that all students were fully engaged in their discussions. Once students got their heads around the concept, it was about an hour of total immersion. Jack, a grade 4 student was keen to get his team installing Eco Houses because 'we can save heaps and we also get some pollution back'... ' we chose to put this into Energy, because we were running a bit low'. Mary commented on the game saying 'We ran out of materials really early, which meant we had nothing left to build a council chambers'.

Teachers commented on how engaged the students were. Alyson saying that it was much better than on-line, similar activities, because the students were engaged with each other as well as the game.

 

- Andrew Stocker (Senior Coordinator Education Services)

Alien Invaders

What a great team of Students we're working with!

Yesterdays session was about Alien Invaders...

The students were asked to spread themselves out in a circle and stand as still as a statue, as quiet as a mouse and listen carefully to the sounds of the school yard.

'I heard 3 different types of birds' said Mary. 'And I heard and aeroplane and a dog' said John.

There were many different sounds occurring and the students were able to talk about these sounds and think about how we can find out the types of animals we have in our school yard, just by listening quietly.

Then, I produced a space ship! (a wooden box with a lid) and told the students 'This is an intergalacic flying saucer from the planet Xenon' travelling to earth on a very important mission. It has flown around the world looking for a great place to land and decided that the grassy area in you school is the perfect landing pad'.

'Now that the spaceship has landed, I'd like each student to take it in turns telling a sentance in the story of the Aliens and what they got up to while at your school.'

So, each student held the talking stick, and added a sentence to the story...

Firstly, The aliens landed and came out of their ship.
There was Bacon on the ship that Kylie ate
The aliens got angry that students were eating their Bacon,
So they came out with their Ray Gun and 'vapourised' some students
Teachers were concerned so they came out to help and Mrs McCarthy got vaporised as well.

The Aliens yelled out 'We coming to take over your planet' and they started spreading out from the school.

Finally, the students teamed up and fought back against the aliens and everything went back to normal.

At the end of the story, I mentioned that I really do have aliens in the spaceship and ask the students 'would you like to see them?'.

I carefully opened the lid and pulled out a Plant - plantango lanceolata a common invasive weed in Australia. I explain that this plant was introduced to Australia and is now invading areas around Melbourne, just like the Aliens in our story.

This activity is one that we have been running for a number of years. It is a really great activity to run when you are creating a habitat area in your school to deepen students understanding of weed species and how and why we need to look at removing them.
-Andrew Stocker (Senior Coordinator Education Services)

Making Progress

So, today was another fantastic session at FPS. Students were engaged in a mathematics activity that focused on area and space which is an extension of an earlier activity that encompassed a range of mathematical principals (I'll provide a link soon). Today's session was aimed at grades 4/5, but can easily work with younger and older students.

Students have thus far been focusing on their desire to create habitat for butterflies and other animals by creating an authentic learning space in the school yard. In designing this space, students need to develop a practical sense of space and determine the types, numbers and requirements of a variety of indigenous plants that are ideal habitat plants for butterflies.

Step one
I asked students to go into the planned space and stand at the geometrical extremities (the edges) of the space they felt would be ideal for their butterfly garden. We discussed what we think should be included in the garden and developed an understanding of the space required for a number of features:

• Plants
• Lizard Lounge(s)
• Paths
• Outdoor classroom

'M' adding details to the map

Step 2Jobs were delegated to the remaining few students - A scribe or map drawer and measurers.

The measurers measured from one person to the person on the opposite side of the space so we ended up with a width and length of the area.

Step 3
The scribe drew a rough outline of the space and wrote in the measurements (width and length) - we then calculated a rough area (136sqmtr).

Step 4
Because our area was not perfectly rectangular, we also measure the length and widths of a variety of other features so we ended up with a rough outline of the space.

Surprisingly, A, O and M were keen to extend this concept and measure other features within the space - How can we figure out exactly where to draw the large trees on the Map? I know, said A, we could measure from this line (the baseline) and also from the back fence to the tree (giving an approximate grid reference to the trunk of the tree).

Once we had the 'floor plan' mapped out, the students then started to place the physical features of their butterfly garden.

In the last part of the session, I introduced some of the indigenous plants that butterflies are attracted to and talked about their space requirements. For example a Grass Tussock takes up around 50cm - 1m of space - so, how many grasses can we plant in our area? 100? Do we want to plant only grasses? do we want to put plants everywhere?

By the end of the session the students had a really great understanding about the space they want to create, the types of plants they require, the area n which they'll be working and the volume of mulch we require to create the garden beds.

So the next session will be confirming these understandings and then getting ready for creating an awesome butterfly garden.

 

- Andrew Stocker (Senior Coordinator Education Services)