Wildlife warriors track penguin trial

• by: MARTINA SIMOS, NIE MANAGER
• From: The Advertiser
• November 22, 2011

Victor Harbor Primary School students Tiarna, Haymish, Jade and Sean with the bins they have made to raise funds for their project. Picture: Mark Brake. 

 

VICTOR Harbor Primary School students are trying to solve the mystery of the disappearing fairy penguins on Granite Island.

It is a local environmental issue that the school is tackling from an educational perspective as a trial of the sustainability strand in the national curriculum.
School staff are documenting the Penguins' Sustainability Project so that other schools can eventually access the resources which are being developed for the program.
Since last term, 18 classes from Reception to Year 7 researched fairy penguins to find out why numbers had been declining on Granite Island.
Teachers Rena Kwong and Jess Morris, and principal Brenton Robins are driving the project.
Ms Kwong said staff had identified three questions for classes to research:
HOW important are the fairy penguins to Victor Harbor?

WHAT is happening to the penguins?
WHAT can individuals and the school do to help them?
"Sustainability is in every aspect of the national curriculum so what we've done is made that a school priority, so we are doing as much as we can to have a sustainable impact or outlook as possible across all the curriculum areas," Ms Kwong said.
"We've linked this particular project to both the national curriculum and the document Teaching For Effective Learning."
Ms Kwong said that while the project had specific educational outcomes, it was up to individual teachers to plan activities to cater for their classes.
"The range of activities encompass the whole curriculum - it's not just literacy based," she said.
"The students have written a persuasive text to write to the Victor Harbor Mayor (Graham Philp), created research-based posters, used Multiple Intelligences, posters, powerpoint presentations and made life-size penguins . . . the array of work is phenomenal."
As part of the project, students collected cans and bottles to raise money for the breeding program at the Penguin Centre.
A committee of 10 Year 5 students was responsible for attending youth forums, collecting and sorting cans that were collected from the school community.
The staff also worked with Education Department Teaching and Learning Services sustainability R to 12 manager Jonathon Noble.
Mr Noble said they were developing examples of what schools could do to make the connections with the sustainability strand within the national curriculum.
The school is filming, photographing and reflecting on its learning journey so teachers in other schools can access it through resource-sharing program Scootle.
Year 5 student Jade, a member of the Youth Sustainability Committee, said she learnt penguin numbers had declined from 2000 to 102 in the past 10 years.
"The penguins are important because they attract tourists to Victor Harbor from all over the world," she said.
"There are 10 of us altogether and each week we collect the cans and bottles from the classes and sort them into bags. So far, we have raised $214."

source