Community Inquiry

1/2s

This term in Community Inquiry, the 1/2s have continued to nurture their connection to, and care towards, our environment. We have done this by:

taking care of our new indigenous gardens by collecting litter and weeding (the huge ash tree, an introduced species, is spreading tens of thousands of seeds in the wellbeing garden - we will need help weeding!)
enjoying visits from Angela Foley from the Merri Creek Management Committee who has been mightily impressed with the work we're doing and has shared more knowledge of Wurundjeri Country's seasons, creatures, and plants
thinking about what we're putting in our bins, especially our landfill bin. Students noticed that at school we put food scraps in the red landfill bin, but at home a lot of students have compost bins.
learning about methane and leachate through our landfill experiment (see the milk bottles below). Students were amazed when they saw that the balloon over the top of the milk bottle mimicking landfill with food scraps had blown up! We learned that putting food scraps in landfill creates methane gas, which is a very toxic gas that damages our climate contributing to climate change. It also produces leachate, which is a toxic watery sludge that enters our waterways, polluting the habitat of creatures that live in our depend upon waterways and even our drinking water.
- Following this, we snuck into the staffroom to see if they are putting food scraps in their landfill bin too (they are!) so students have decided that we need to make compost bins and posters for every classroom and staffroom. This will be our project in term 4. Students started drafting up some ideas for posters already.

Food scraps sent to landfill create methane gas, which contributes to climate damage

3/4s

The 3/4s have been spending the term preparing for the art show. We've taken inspiration from our incursion with local artist Claire Mosley last term to do more nature journalling, nurture our curiosity, and increase our capacity to observe and notice small details.

Students have used prompts provided by Claire Mosley like "I notice...", "I wonder...", "It reminds me of..." in their nature journals.

We then looked at her nature scavenger cards and nature bingo cards, and have been creating our own versions to be presented and used at the art show.

Woven throughout all of this has been a side focus on the wellbeing impacts that spending time in nature has on our mental and physical health.