Natural Links Incursion

Program Overview

Planet Earth is a complex environment that relies on delicate links and sophisticated relationships. This program gives students the opportunity to classify natural objects, explore the biodiversity around your school, understand the complexity of food webs and learn about human impacts, so we can identify positive actions we can all take at home and at school to create happy, healthy environments and communities to live, work and play.

This program can be tailored to suit different levels of understanding, from topic introduction to topic consolidation. Topics include:

Classification
Students explore the characteristics and differences between living, previously living and non-living elements within a habitat through a hands-on classification activity.

Food Webs & Interconnectedness
This activity allows students to examine the complex relationships in nature across three continents during an interactive food web game.

Helping Habitats
By role playing animals that are typically found in urban wetland habitats, students get to explore animal needs and the impact humans have on their ability to survive. Students use the animals’ perspectives to think of positive changes that we can all make, to support local habitats such as creeks, lakes and parks to be healthy – as healthy habitats help reduce the impacts of climate change, give us great places to visit and provide a home to many precious local native plants and animals. Weather impacts on wetlands associated with Climate Change considered include: strong winds, flooding, rising sea levels, fire, longer droughts and seasonal irregularities.

Habitats and Survival (Mini Beasts, Plants and Birds)
Students get to do a biodiversity audit as they explore the different habits in the school grounds. They get to identify and collect (where safe to do so) as many different species as possible in collection containers, so under magnification they can identify their different characterises and consider what they are and what they need to survive. Students learn that vegetation, not just trees, plays a vital role in providing oxygen, food and shelter for living things and discover how plants and animals are intimately connected. By the end of this module, students will understand that we share our local habitats with many different species, each of which plays an important role in keeping the environment balanced.

Humans Impacts & Call to Action
Discuss how human activities can affect and/or disrupt natural links within the environment and let your students determine actions they can adopt to minimise their impact on the environment.

Duration: 1.5 hours

Inclusions and Notes

Certificate and Conservation Code to reinforce learnings
Post event, schools will  be issued a Certificate of Participation and Conservation Code for each class which students are encouraged to sign and hang in the classroom as a reminder of their learnings and their commitment to protect the environment.

We encourage schools to connect with us a few weeks or months after school excursions to share behaviour changes made by the students or activities undertaken as a result of their learnings during their program so we can share success stories to inspire others, monitor the ongoing impact of our programs and make relevant updates or changes if required.

Restrictions: Program timing considerations: Staff require 10-minutes between groups to reset activities and a 30-minute break for lunch when more than 2 groups are booked. Available to Melbourne Metro area only.

What to Provide: Multi-purpose room, floor space, whiteboard

Curriculum Links

Science: Science Understanding
– Living things can be grouped on a basis of observable features and can be distinguished from non-living things (VCSSU057)
– Different living things have different life cycles and depend on each other and the environment to survive (VCSSU058)

Geography: Geographical Knowledge
– Similarities and differences in individuals and groups feeling and perceptions about places, and how they influence views about the protection of these places (VCGGK083)

The Victorian Curriculum F-10 content elements are © VCAA, reproduced by permission. Victorian Curriculum F-10 elements accurate at time of publication. The VCAA does not endorse or make any warranties regarding this resource. The Victorian Curriculum  F-10 and related content can be accessed directly at the VCAA website.