Endangered Species in Glenorchy Primary

Endangered species in Glenorchy? Who'd have thought it.....well the senior classrooms inquiry this term is all about endangered species. It had been a while since I've been up there so I figured I'd pay them a visit for the afternoon and combine it with the yearly summary meeting after school.

'Who am I? and where do I live?' on page 175 of the kit is the perfect activity for this. Thankfully Miss Reed had a wonderful collection of photos of endangered species to use for this activity. One by one each of the children comes to the front of the class and is given a photo of the animal. They aren't allowed to show anyone else the photo, well Miss Reed and I took a sneaky peek.

The rest of the class have to ask questions with yes no answers and try to figure out what the endangered species is. This then spawns really good active discussion about the habitat of these animals which we can link to activities that us wonderful humans partake in to destroy these valuable habitats and species.

Looking around school, the gardens and tunnel house are look superb and the chicken coop is almost done!!! If I hadn't been a fool and locked myself out of the office that morning I'd have lots of awesome pictures to show you all here. Oh well, you'll have to check back here soon to see pics of all the great work that is going on in Glenorchy. Well done!

Living Landscapes - Queenstown Primary

With the success of Spud-In-A-Bucket only recently behind us it was time for me to don my Enviroschools hat and go back to Queenstown Primary for a session from the Living Landscapes section of the Enviroschools kit. After some discussion with the teachers we decided to have a session on 'Healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy people' page 188 of the kit.

What this activity does is introduce the children to different soil types, is it sandy? is it moist? does it hold water well? I've a couple of experiments to do to show the difference between the way compost holds water versus sandy rocky dirt.

Once we have a bit of an idea about what different soil types look like it's time to go and explore. We split into different groups and off we went, ice cream tubs in hand to collect different soil samples.

With the samples in each group each drew a map of where they got their soil from. These results will be added to the main vision map once it is developed next year, this is great practice for mapping skills.

All we have to do now is identify the different soil types using the chart on page 190. And the results? No surprise here, the soil from the existing gardens was the best, closely followed by the area above the courts. Otherwise we will have some work to do in enriching the soil in other areas if we are going to have rich healthy plants growing.

Great work everyone, what a fantastic activity and so good to spend a lesson outside, this is what it's all about, getting amongst it.