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Enviroschools Marlborough / Posts tagged "empowered students" (Page 4)
Richmond View at Taylor Awarenesses

Classification of Living Things

The students at Richmond View School became Botanists this term as they explored the classification of native plants on the Taylor Awa. People have always given names to things that they see, including plants and animals. So, of course most of us turn to names as the first form of classification.  It was a scientist, Linnaeus, that first developed a hierarchal naming structure (of 7 parts no less). This conveyed information about what a living thing was and also its closest relatives. Earlier this term, if you happened to be walking your dog down the Taylor Awa, you may have come across Richmond View School students studying the Tui to Town plantings. Their inquiry for...

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Wētā houses at Picton Kindergarten

The tamariki at Picton Kindergarten have been learning all about Wētā. This evolved through their exploration of te ngahere and how to care for the native flora and fauna through pest control. It began when one of the tamariki discovered a wētā family in her woodshed. She recognised it as one of our native insects and sent in photos to Kindergarten for everyone to see. Jo, then bought in a real live wētā from her home and they made a habitat for it. This lead to learning about what they like to eat, where they live, how many eggs they lay as well as what predators endanger them. When the tamariki learnt that cats, dogs and hedgehogs endanger wētā, they...

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Native Garden

Fairhall’s Native Garden Entrance

Fairhall School's native garden entrance has a makeover Fairhall School has a meandering native garden created to grow beside a stream space that only has water in it for part of the year. It has a bridge over this space and is an area the school highly values. Over the years it has been added to and this time it was the native garden entrance that got a makeover.  One of the senior classes and their teacher has been busy doing some planning and work to the entrance.  They recently overhauled the Marlborough Rock Daisy garden at the entrance to the garden/ngahere. As part of this space they have created a bark mountain to...

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Fairhall School kaitiaki

Kaitiaki at Fairhall School

Te Rūma Rātā and te Rūma Pōhutukawa - kaitiaki of birds and habitats at Fairhall School Whare wētā At the beginning of the year te Rūma Rātā and te Rūma Pohutukawa made a kaitiaki pledge to be guardians of birds and habitats at Fairhall School. We first set out to learn in particular about New Zealand birds, lizards and wētā so this could help inform how we could make a difference to their habitats around our school and local community. We also worked with local environmental educators and our Enviroschools facilitator to deepen our understanding of the native bush that is in our ngahere and what plantings might encourage more wildlife to...

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‘Save the fantail’ project

Grovetown School’s Waihi class has embarked on a special project this year to save the fantails in their school forest. Identify The project came about as part of an inquiry: ‘How is our place unique?’. The class began by exploring and learning about the native, endemic and introduced animals and plants in their school. During this exploration, some of the children found empty fantail nests which prompted thinking about why the nests might be empty. Some of the students’ ideas were:  “rats have eaten them" - "it is too cold for the eggs and chicks so birds don't lay eggs in winter" - "the fantails think it’s too dangerous because of the rats and possibly stoats so they won't...

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Butterfly house Seymour Kindergarten

Butterfly house a special space

Seymour Kindergarten's new butterfly house has become a cherished space, with tamariki and kaiako benefiting from the opportunities it provides. The different life stages of monarch butterflies have long been an area of fascination for tamariki at Seymour Kindergarten, and kaiako have supported their learning in a variety of ways over the years. Their latest innovation has been the construction of an impressive butterfly house.  Tamariki have experimented with different methods to find the best way to capture caterpillar eggs and transfer them into the butterfly house.  They tried taking eggs from the swan plants outside and raising them inside before transferring them.  Sometimes this was successful, however, it took a lot of work as...

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Grovetown School_Bird scavenger hunt

Grovetown School students create bird hunt resource

Students at Grovetown School have created a ‘bird scavenger hunt’ resource for use at Grovetown Lagoon. Grovetown School has had a long-standing connection with the nearby lagoon, being involved in regular whole-school tree-planting days and hosting a shade house where lagoon volunteers propagate and grow native plant seedlings. This project was part of a student inquiry looking at connections with the local community and local places.

Students in Waverley class came up with the idea of creating a resource during a class visit to the lagoon when they photographed and observed the birds that they saw. Students worked in pairs to research one of the birds that they had seen and to make a...

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