4 teachers

This page contains information that will be useful to teachers using this website and its snapshots and interesting articles, in the following sections :

  • valuing diversity in the family farm snapshots
  • classroom usage
  • for Science and 2014 National Science Week
  • Australian Currliculum and AusVELS links
  • Sustainability and our farmlands environments
  • read4 Nature
  • Biodiversity in farmlands education
  • for World Environment Day 2014  and 2015
  • for World Soils Day 2014 (intro below to activity for Where food begins )
  • United Nations Decade of Biodiversity activities
 As a freelance environmental educator, my work in creating these activities and this website is unfunded. So  if you can, please support me…with a donation and/or sharing with me how these activities went when you used them.  Thanking you in anticipation…

Valuing Diversity in the Family Farm Snapshots

As an overview of the collection of Family Farm Snapshots, this introduction  diversity in familhy farm snapshots for AAEE 2016   (6mb pdf) was developed in response to Theme 6 of the Australian Association of Environmental Education’s 2016 national conference Tomorrow Making – our present to the future. It covers diversity in the types of family farming, the produce, sustainability issues, and the actions that can be taken.

Classroom usage

I have developed six groups of resources for putting farms, farming and farmlands into education. They are listed on this page below, and summarised in this  252 Kb pdf with web links enviroed4all resources 4 farms

Snapshots enable comparisons of farms, family roles, products from the farm gate and on-farm for family use, and different ways and parts of the farming environment that is looked after. This will especially fall under subject domains of English/ Literacy, Communication, Humanities (Geography, Economics), Sustainability, Thinking Skills, and Science.  The snapshots and articles could be used in multi-level classes for shared/individual reading, comprehension, analysis of its linguistic features, discussion and response.

for Science and 2014 National Science Week

Use any of the six groups of resources listed in the pdf enviroed4all resources 4 farms  summarising the links on this page in August.

The snaphots will cover some of this year’s National Science Week themes directly from family farmers – ‘Food for our future – Science feeding the world’; – sustainability, crop management, water use for plant growth, soils, seeds and grain products, food production, innovation and technology in agriculture, use of fertilizers and herbicides, precision agriculture etc.

In addition, the Wimmera HUB Strategic Partnership Project from the DEECD Sustainability and our Farmlands Environments has produced on-line resources by Wimmera school children, which also support several of these themes: sustainability issues of dry times, pests, and salinity and help from machinery developments and developing knowledge of salinity and seeds.

Other resources that are on the enviroed4all websites can also be used for National Science Week 2014 with its theme linked to farming

Biodiversity on the farm  link to the Biodiversity section  for general introduction then specific examples
Farm picture story books to read link to the Read4Nature section 
Food grown at home survey link to this Home food survey section
Celebrate our Great Grains –  link to this Crops section

My National Science Week program “Putting Science into National Science Week 2014” (reported here)  went to 12 Wimmera-Mallee towns and about 250 people from all ages, with two programs:

  • “Celebration our Great Grains‘ for community groups, funded by Inspiring Australia through Yarriambiack Shire -see why different communities think we should celebrate our great grains here
  • “Sustainability and our Farmlands Environments” for schools funded by the DEECD Strategic Partnership Project to Wimmera HUB and by a ASTA grant to Goroke P12 School, – see what farming in Science concepts children gained in the second half of this page here

Australian Curriculum and AusVELS Curriculum links

As I am in Victoria, Australia, curriculum suggestions as to where the resources on this website could fit come from the Australian Curriculum or the AusVELS Victorian Curriculum.   There is a wide variety of ‘content descriptions’ (aims for learning) that these resources could support.

Read some examples from the Australian Curriuculum (AC) for English, humanities and  IYFF in AC AusVELS Science Domains. In the AC, Sustainability concepts are covered through a series of Organising Ideas to be integrated with all other subjects and so able to be included in the domains.

Sustainability and our Farmlands Environments

Read the Wimmera HUB SPP  teachers PD which has produced picture books by children to promote learning about sustainability and farmlands on the following issues :

  • 2012 – pests, dry times
  • 2013 – improvements from machinery and salinity knoweldge
  • 2014 – improvements from plant breeding – grains .

These books have also been shared for teacher training in schools, at the WEEC 2013 Marrakesh , GA Narrmbool Toolbox 2013, GA Melbourne Toolbox 2014, AAEE conference in Hobart 2014, and at WEEC 2015 Gotenburg.

Unfortunately, the DEECD SPP did not provide ongoing funding after 2014, but the books remain on the school website or can be accessed by a request to me at enviroed4all@gmail.com

read4Nature

2012 Wimmera Inspiring Australia community Science project which led to about 100 picture books being documented for their Science content about Nature and ideas on how this could be used in Science explorations – all on-line at read4Nature.

Biodiversity in Farmlands Education

To celebrate the International Day of Biodiversity 2014, May 22  with a family farm persepective, use these links from the Snapshots :
“Texels- Warracknabeal”  has an introduction to  plant and creature groups in any environment.
“With trees come the birds, Langi Banool” has an amazing list of birds and food plants, on a grazing and timber farm
and the biodiversity and our farm pages on the enviroed4all website.

For why,  where and how biodiversity can be done with farmlands , consider these three articles exploring , 1 What should Biodiversity ed do
how it works most simply as 2 biodiversity ed out your window
and finally what farmlands can teach us about biodiversity.3 Farmlands for biod ed

World Environment Day

2014 “Raise your voice, not the sea level”  – For a  survey of foodplants grown in Wimmera ‘backyard’ gardens, instructions for community and/or schools go here

Growing food at home is a  great local action, with no food miles, so it does not contribute to sea level rises. Inspired by the two Horsham Ladies Probus snapshots about their food plants in small suburban backyard gardens, we raised our voices from the Wimmera with a survey for a WED activity between 4 and 6 June, reported here

2015 “Seven billion dreams. One planet. Consume with carel”  –  TThe two latest Snapshots  could be used for this theme, focussing on food as to what is being consumed.

Growing food as a family for our family”, Sa’anapu Uta, Samoa is from the point of view of a boy who shows their traditional foods of his family’s farm, how he helps them grow, and how they are cooked in an umu , in ground oven.

Married to my food forest farm, Mfangango Island, Lake Victoria, Kenya is from the point of view of a father, who runs a family farm based on permaculture principals, teaches other farmers and has set up a variety of community project to provide teaching and good food.

Suggestion for how to link these to English, Communication, Geography, Science and Sustainability are snapshots for WED2015

 

officialWSDA3webWorld Soils Day 2014 December 5

Supporting the WSD theme “Where food begins“, following on from WED 2014 above, and forming a link between the 2014 IYFF and the 2015 IYSoils ,  a similar survey of foodplants could be made in our Wimmera ‘backyard’ gardens with the modification to tie them to this WSD poster.  Download a 200kb pdf here for the instructions, and curriculum links Where food begins

 

United Nations Decade of Biodiversity (UNDB) Activities

Since 2010 I have been writing quarterly articles in Otherways to encourage activities in many ways that will support the UNDB theme of living in harmony with Nature. Each year follows an international or national year theme. Read the articles selecting from the index at Otherways Articles

page last updated 4 June 2015