Switch Off!

The Findon Planet Savers have started their 'Switch Off' Campaign. The FPS Leaders have created some awesome posters to encourage staff and students to make sure lights are turned off when the room is not in use. 

Rubbish Free Fridays

Rubbish Free Fridays at Findon!

The Leaders at Findon are in full swing with their new campaign - the Rubbish Free Friday. The leaders have announced in assembly and made a power point presentation to encourage students to come in each Friday with no rubbish in their lunch boxes. Student cohorts are selected each week (for example Learning Team 1) and any student who comes rubbish free gets a prize and an entry into the weekly raffle. Each Friday, names are drawn from the hat for the weekly prize and points towards their house team. 

Welcome to 2014!

Welcome to 2014!

Last week, Victorian school students returned to school for 2014. The education staff at the La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary are getting geared up for upcoming experiences – both excursions to the LTWS and incursions to schools, including the work we will continue to do at Findon Primary and Charles La Trobe College (funded through the Victorian Government’s Strategic Partnerships Program).

2013 was a successful year for LTWS education. We had a total of 4041 students engaged in our education experiences from 58 schools across Melbourne and Victoria. As you might expect considering our location in Bundoora, the majority of these students (and schools) were from the northern suburbs. Somewhat surprisingly we had more visitors from the north-west than the north-eastern suburbs. We had more than twice as many visits from government schools than from Catholic and independent schools combined.

For the education staff, highlights of 2013 included the SPP funded experiences at Findon and Charles La Trobe College (which you can read about in previous posts), a Frog Bog habitat creation incursion to a school in Healesville and the review and improvement of the Discovering Ecology experience (with great feedback from the schools that participated).

We look forward to 2014 and the adventures to come!

-Juli Atkinson (education staff)

LTWS education staff get 'hands on' at a training day in 2013

Last session with CLT Kingsbury for 2013

Today was my last session with the CLT prep/one students for this year. We had a close-up look at some of the invertebrates the students discovered last week. Then we coloured and labelled pictures of invertbrates - introducing the students to the idea of invertbrate body parts (we may expand on this next year).
The students had trouble imagining how many wings and legs some of the invertebrates have - especially millipedes and bees.

These 'Invertebrate Info sheets' are available as a resource for teachers.

- Juli Atkinson (education staff)

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)

Bug Scatter!

Today I introduced the CLT prep/one students to some of the invertebrates that live in leaf litter ('Bugs that live in leaf litter' is available as a resource for teachers). The students really loved naming the invertebrates and searching for them in the leaf litter. A few students were afraid of the invertebrates or had trouble finding bugs by themselves, but most were incredibly excited! One student, Josh, who is normally difficult to engage, was absolutely enthralled by the bugs and refused to stop looking at them even when the class had moved back to the classroom. He was very gentle with them.

- Juli (education staff)

Beneficial insects and Butterfly pots

In our last session with CLT OV for 2013, we explored why insects are important to people with the Beneficial Insects – how insects help people activity, evaluating their understanding of this with the Insect/Benefit worksheet, with the majority of students correctly linking insects to their benefit.

The 'Beneficial Insects – how insects help people' activity is available as a resource for teachers.

We harnessed the student’s love of crafty activities to elaborate on this with students Making Butterfly Pots which they potted up with indigenous “butterfly attracting” plants to attract these pollinators to their gardens.

'Creating Butterfly Pots' is available as a resource for teachers.

 

Students finished the year with a bit of friendly team competition being pollinators themselves in the Butterfly Game (which Andrew has also written about).

- Amanda Dare (Education Senior Officer)