The GREEN Page

BIODIVERSITY AUDIT 

This Thursday, our Pathways students observed and tallied native and introduced trees, shrubs, ground covers, garden areas and habitat areas to work through our annual Biodiversity audit.  Emma the Resource Smart consultant for our area and Claire from the Ceres Education centre, conducted the workshop to help students complete the audit. 

Bio means living and diversity means the variety of animals and plants in an environment. Our students learnt more about the indigenous trees and plants in our school ground and the different types of insects in our school environment. 

After the audit students came up with actions to improve our environment. They want to include more indigenous plants to encourage butterflies and good insects to the garden areas and build insect hotels. The frog bog in the garden behind the cottage, needs to be fitted out with water plants and water to improve the frog habitat. Our students want to create an area for small lizards with big rocks and logs.

Once the calculations are done, we will learn how healthy our school environment is, by receiving a habitat score from Ceres. This will help us complete some actions in our Biodiversity module. 

NARANGA CLEAN UP DAYS

Juniors worked enthusiastically in House groups to collect rubbish using long tongs and buckets. Worst areas for rubbish collection were behind the BER building and in the hedged area in the Lower Junior yard. 

Thursday results: 62 small items of rubbish found in the Lower Junior yard.

3 lids

1 half eaten apple

32 plastic items

5 pieces of paper

19 food wrappers

2 yoghurt drinks 

86 items found in the Upper Junior / Senior yard.

6 recyclable items

2 food scraps

48 plastic items

30 food wrappers

Rubbish was sorted into groups and counted by students. Through this activity, students learnt which items could be recycled and avoid going into landfill. 

I would like to thank students and staff for working hard to make our school grounds tidy. We have a long way to go to reduce rubbish amounts. Nude Food lunches now include Mondays and Fridays. If we all take responsibility for putting our rubbish in the correct bins we will improve our areas. Junior students will develop actions to help reduce our rubbish.