Teacher Preparation

Overarching learning goal: Students will understand how local communities - including local governments - operate and will discover what issues the local community seem to be most passionate about. Students will make suggestions about why some issues have opposing views within the community and will take action to make changes in the local community.

Most communities are serviced by one or more local papers. These are usually delivered to people’s homes but are also available online. Within these papers are articles about local issues. By reading local papers you can identify environmental and social issues in a certain area. Councils and some community group newsletters are also good sources for identifying local issues these can usually be found on the internet.

Student and classroom organisation

Research activity

In small groups, select a local paper to research. Students should download the latest three copies of the paper and analyse the issues. They will need to create a spreadsheet that helps them to organise their information as outlined below.

Spreadsheet 1.

Step 1:

Analysing what environmental issues are published in local papers.

Students are to find out how many environmental related articles are in each issue. They are to work out how many of these articles relate to biodiversity and conservation. They need to categorise each biodiversity issue into the following sections:

Wildlife
Revegetation and land management
Keeping pets under control
Waterway issues
Pests and weeds
Pollution
Other.

From the data collected, students should be able to identify the major issues the local papers covered.

Step 2.

Finding out about the local issues.

For each issue, student should research the following information and add it to their spreadsheet:

What is the issue?
Who is interested in the issues?
What is the proposed solution?
Source of information.

Step 3.

Analysing which local issues are picked up by the wider media.

Students use internet search engines to find out which local issues have attracted wider media attention. In their searches they use local place names along with possible issues. Colour the issues red that have attracted wider media attention.

Spreadsheet 2.

Step 1.

Research local conservation campaigns (new spreadsheet).

Use a range of local and state directories to try and identify biodiversity campaigns being run in the local area. The council should have some campaigns dealing with pests, weeds, litter and pollution. They might also have campaigns about using parks or getting people to plant wildlife gardens. Organisations like Clean Up Australia and Planet Ark's National Tree Day may have local campaigns.

For each campaign students should collect data on their spreadsheet using the following:

Who is running the campaign?
What is the issue the campaign addresses?
What is the proposed solution?
Source of information.

Drawing conclusions

As a class use a white board to list all the local biodiversity issues that students were able to find. Highlight the issues that were covered several times.

Use this arbitrary rating system to indicate the health of the local biodiversity.

Large areas (30% or more) of natural ecosystem in excellent condition and health. Lots of wildlife lives in the area.
Large areas (30% or more) of natural ecosystem needing a lot of work to restore it. Lots of wildlife lives in the area.
Some areas of natural ecosystems and revegetated habitat. Wildlife is seen all the time.
Almost no natural ecosystems, but some areas of revegetated habitat. Wildlife seen some of the time.
Very little natural ecosystem and not much revegetated habitat (about 5% or less). No exciting local wildlife.
Nothing much natural around and almost no wildlife.

As a class discuss the big question:

Do the local issues being presented in your community properly reflect the condition of your local biodiversity?

Taking part in School Tree Day is a great way to increase the biodiversity in your local area. As a class sign up to make a difference. Register here!.

Schools Tree Day - Investigate a local issue

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