Around the classrooms 

Plants - welcome to the S1 Jungle!

The Environmental Science class has turned S1 into a mini indoor jungle, thanks to the support of Haars Nursery, who supplied around 25 plants free of charge to the school. The room looks amazing and the students are very excited to be learning in an environment full of plants. The budding green thumbs in the environmental science classes will be looking after the plants and making sure they thrive. Thanks Haars Nursery!

Pants - What’s eating your undies?

Over the summer holidays, the year 12 Environmental class completed a very unique experiment – all over Bayside cotton undies were buried in the name of science! Based on the “Soil Your Undies” campaign by the University of New England (UNE) and CottonInfo, the experiment involved burying 100-per-cent cotton underwear for eight weeks and then digging them back up. The more degraded they were meant the more biodiverse the soil was with microbes and other decomposing organisms. The results were very mixed with some reduced to just the elastic edges (which are obviously not made out of cotton) to ones that had barely been touched. While a bit of fun for the class and a great learning activity on practical skills and biodiversity, farmers have been using this experiment to see if their soil needs to be improved. 

For anyone out there who decides to test their soil health, you can also add your results to a national data base - http://cottoninfo.com.au/sites/default/files/tools/cotton-soil-map/index.html.

Ms Kerry Archer

Environmental Studies teacher