Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Helping hands

20 minutes

Find Out: Supporting our own backyard

25 minutes

Take Action: Spread the word

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

explore case studies of organisations working to promote the co-existence of humans and wildlife
identify how they can connect with organisations in their local area to influence the characteristics of their places.

Success criteria

Students can:

identify how people have influenced the characteristics of a place to promote people/wildlife co-existence.

Tune In: Helping hands

Step 1

Provide each student with paper and coloured pencils or markers. Set a timer for 1 minute and ask students to draw a healthy habitat. The prompt is deliberately vague; each student will envisage something different.

Step 2

When the minute is up, ask students to hold up their drawings. Discuss any common features. Ask students to raise their hands if, when they were drawing their healthy habitat, they imagined humans helping to keep the habitat healthy.

Select some students to share why they have their hands up, then ask some who have their hands down why they did not think about humans helping the habitat. Common responses might be that humans destroy natural habitats through our actions or that they think some natural environments have existed without human support.

Remind students that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have actively cared for Australian environments for many thousands of years to keep them in good health, but that some of these practices were stopped by Europeans who forced First Nations peoples off their Country.

Step 3

Write the words ‘conservation’ and ‘regeneration’ on the whiteboard, and ask students to share their thoughts on the difference between these 2 terms when it comes to healthy habitats.

Decide upon a definition for both, such as:

Conservation: maintaining or protecting an ecosystem and the biodiversity within it.

Regeneration: improving the health of an ecosystem to bring back biodiversity that may have been lost because of past actions.

Direct students to notice that active work is done in both these cases, and it is done by humans! We could think of these people as ‘biodiversity warriors’ because they put in a lot of effort to conserve or improve biodiversity.

Step 4

Search for and display the websites of large organisations in Australia, such as:

Toggle between these websites, noticing commonalities such as:

Each website has a prominent mission statement that mentions how people are essential in supporting the environment.
Each website has a menu at the top with page tabs explaining what they do and how people can help.

Conclude by telling students that humans play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation and regeneration. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always done this across Australia, and other groups also now contribute.

Find Out: Supporting our own backyard

Step 1

Return to the list of local biodiversity projects or groups that were researched in the previous lesson. If this lesson hasn’t been completed, compile a list of suitable organisations in advance. Useful places to start are council websites or lists compiled by state conservation councils: WA, NT, SA, QLD, NSW, ACT, VIC, TAS.

Step 2

Break students into groups of 2-3 and allow them to select 1 of the local biodiversity warriors. Research the following questions and record the answers on the Student Worksheet.

What issues are they addressing?
How are they working to mitigate this issue?
What successes have they had?
What challenges are they facing?
What resources do they need?
How has this group influenced the characteristics of the region where you live, or a nearby natural place you can visit?

Learning extension: If possible, arrange (or have students arrange!) for someone from 1 of the local organisations or projects to visit the class and share what they do. Please note that this process could potentially take 4+ weeks to arrange with an organisation.

Take Action: Spread the word

Step 1

Set up a ‘local action expo’ in your classroom to allow each group to share their research with the rest of the class. Each group can set up a desk labelled with their organisation and their key research points.

Have at least 1 group member stay at the desk to explain the organisation while other students roam the classroom and learn. Allow enough time to swap students so that everyone has a turn to roam.

Step 2

After the expo, bring the class back together for a debrief. As a class, discuss common themes between organisations, the threats they are addressing, and the actions people can take.

Learning extension: Challenge students to design a simple poster, brochure, or short video that promotes 1 key biodiversity action they discovered during the expo. These can be displayed around the school or shared with families to spread awareness beyond the classroom

Reflection

Step 1

Invite students to form a circle. Individually, ask students to choose 1 local group or organisation they researched and complete the following sentence aloud to the group: ‘I think [Group Name] is a biodiversity warrior because…’

For example, ‘I think Friends of Oxley Creek Common are biodiversity warriors because they protect bird habitats and teach people about native plants.’

Be a Biodiversity Warrior

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Summary

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