Go MAD for a new iBook resource

Hello everyone and happy term 1 for all the teachers out there knuckling down with new classes, syllabuses and paperwork! I have 2 things that may help you in 2016….

We are proud to announce the publication of our very first free iBook educational resource! Thanks to Blacktown City Council and many teachers who helped in the design of this book it is now available for download on the iBookstore.

“What happens to the rain” is a student enquiry based multi-touch book that looks at urban water management and healthy waterways. It is highly interactive with quizzes, videos, games, pop ups and embedded apps to keep students enagaged.

Designed for Stage 3 (but useful for stage 2 and 4 also!) it comes with a 10 week unit of work for the NSW Science and Technology syllabus. The unit encompasses the skill of “working technologically”. The iBook will work on an iPad, iPhone or Mac computer.

Download for free from the iBookstore https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/what-happens-to-the-rain/id1084586515?mt=11

Or find this link and all the resources on our website.

Secondly – for high schools!

Registrations are still open for the 2016 GoMAD challenge -an environmental leadership challenge for your students.This is a collaboration between Taronga Zoo, DoE, OEH and many Enviro Ed Centres to help your students Make A Difference!

Register via this link:

https://taronga.org.au/gomad-challenge-sydney

 

 

Warawi Yana Nura – Art, Acknowledgements and Creativity

Our Aboriginal student leadership program continued today here at Brewongle EEC. Students got their smocks on and let the artistic talent flow. We saw some amazing designs as we worked on some rather large animals. Using a combination of symbols, dots, hand prints and other techniques – we now have some very impressive large paintings to put up!

Erin Wilkins – our Darug educator also helped students develop their own acknowledgment of country. Students are now taking a leadership role within their schools and reading acknowledgments at school events. The Aboriginal Representative Council at Blacktown Girls High is in full swing and I look forward to hearing of their initiatives.

Thanks so much to all participants and have a great holiday everyone.

Aboriginal Student Leadership

Warrawi Yana Nura – Aboriginal Student Cultural Leadership

Early this week we had a moving and special day. We journeyed with Aboriginal students and staff from Arthur Phillip HS, Blacktown Girls HS, St Clair HS and St Mary’s Senior to several rock art sites in the NW Sydney region.

We offer thanks to the Darug Community and Elder Aunty Edna Watson for giving their permission to enter and view these sites. Our guide for the day was Erin Wilkins – Darug woman and Aboriginal Educator with Brewongle EEC and Muru Mittigar.

Erin Wilkins and students discovering kangaroo and shield engraving.

I can think of no better way to celebrate NAIDOC week in schools than to share some of this incredible heritage of the Sydney region with local students. It was profound event for us and we hope the students too. The sites we visited in Canoelands and Maroota are examples of the rich thousand year old sites that are all around us here in the Sydney basin.

To me, a non-Aboriginal man – I was incredibly grateful to visit these sites and witness the power and a little of the way things were in this land for millenia past. Feelings of sadness and shame bubbled up for the destruction of culture and people that occurred in our tainted colonial past.

If you did not have the chance to watch ‘The Secret River’ on ABC TV recently – I would highly recommend this as a confronting and insightful historical fiction of early settlement and Darug Aboriginal cultures on the Hawkesbury River. It is based on a book by Kate Grenville which is a must read also.

I think these sites are as significant to the world as Stonehenge or the Pyramids, but it is a sad reflection on our country that they are mostly forgotten and lost to all but a few of the community. Maybe it is for the best – they are less prone to vandalism and tourism the way they are. They will gradually erode and fade away.

The Darug culture will not – thanks to custodians like Erin and the Darug community who are educating us all of these traditions. We hope students who took part in our program take pride in their culture and value themselves as custodians of culture into the future.

Listen to Uncle Wes Marne tell a story of the Rainbow Serpent at the Canoelands cave site.

And Aunty Edna Watson discuss the Devil’s Rock site at Maroota

How to Cook up a Bonza Eco-Mystery.

Photo from the WK Clifford – Australian Museum

So you take a feathery local species, like a Tawny Frogmouth, you mix in a crime scene, some suspects, plenty of hands on investigating and SHAZAM, you have yourselves an outdoor, eco-mystery challenge that never fails to grip primary age students.

Our Eco Mystery day – ‘The Tawny Tragedy‘ is one of our most engaging programs. Students eyes widen when they arrive at Brewongle to discover a crime scene complete with police tape and the chalk outline of the victim.

After reading the police report and discovering the food, water and shelter needs of the Tawny Frogmouth, the investigations begin.

Our ponds will be scoured for water bugs and tadpoles – are there are any water quality issues that may have killed Tawny? The forest and house areas are tested for health and possible food contaminents.

Weeds, feral animal prints and a habitat assessment will round out the day of mystery solving. Students are left to ruminate on their evidence and decide on a cause of death. A forensic police report arrives hot off the fax. Recommendations are sought by Brewongle staff to prevent this occurring in the future.

Could you replicate something like this in your school if you can’t visit us or your nearest Environmental Education Centre? This program is a fantastic example of engaging students in the outdoors. Students are required to use higher order thinking, problem solving and creativity skills. Literacy and numeracy are embedded and students emerge with knowledge and understanding of how an ecosystem works. Of course it also has all the syllabus links needed to fit in to the Australian Curriculum. Thanks to Barnier Public School for solving the crime!

Cross Curriculum Priorities – do you need help with Aboriginal Education?

A quick mental health check for all teachers – How are you going? It is the end of the year, report time, exam time….. brains are frazzelled and our patience can be…. thinning. On top of the usual teaching duties (teaching, planning, meetings, counselling, extra curricular stuff, sport, playground duty, homework, parents, other staff, assessments, marking, marking, marking – am I close?) many of you would also be programming for the new Australian Curriculum. How is it going for you? Are you and your colleagues on top of things? If not, this may help…..

I hope you are managing to incorporate the learning across the curriculum priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. Read on if you feel you need help in this area…

Brewongle EEC has just finished a professional development workshop on Aboriginal Education (with 62 teachers in attendance from primary and high schools). Due to demand we are planning to run another one soon (watch this space! – and Schoolbiz if you are NSW DEC staff)

If you were not able to attend – we have placed all the resources from the day and many that were suggested by participants in the resources section of our website – feel free to help yourself!

There were many highlights from the workshop (held at the University of Western Sydney – Thanks to the UWS-RCE and Jen Dollin.) and I would like to indulge you with a few that stood out for me.

Finding a way to talk and engage with your local Aboriginal community was an important point mentioned by teachers and presenters alike. This might be as simple as having a chat to parents after school or finding your local community centre or Elders. Talking to an Aboriginal Education Officer (NSW DEC Schools) if your school or district has one could be another place to start. We have listed our Western Sydney Aboriginal educators (who would be happy to talk to you) on our website.

Brewongle EEC has a long history and association with the Darug people and our Aboriginal team help us to run a variety of camp and day programs here at Brewongle for your students. These could be a fantastic addition to your class teachings. We can design a program to suit your needs or you can utilise our existing programs. All of them involve hands on exploration and interactive learning for your students and often prove to be great professional development for staff as well. Discover the uses of artefacts and tools, follow our kangaroo tracks to discover the secrets of the bush plants, and enjoy some art and music! Your local EEC may also be able to help you if Brewongle is too far to travel.

Another standout feature of the day for me was discovering  the treasure trove of resources that is housed in the Henry Parkes Equity Resource Centre (internal intranet link – for NSW DEC schools only). If you are not aware of this place (as I was not) then have a browse through the fantastic array of books, CD’s, Movies and other resources that can be borrowed online by anyone in NSW DEC schools. Their array of Aboriginal resources was amazing and many of them were snapped up by participating teachers on the day.

Thanks to all the participating teachers for their feedback and suggestions – we are taking it all on board as we plan the next event. Enjoy the slide show below of the day.

If NSW DEC teachers would like to comment on Yammer (the new DEC internal social media tool) please join the conversation in the Aboriginal Education group and provide feedback to your colleagues on the workshop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Caring for our Brewongle country

Once again we are indebted to the lovely students and staff from Mt Druitt Tutorial School for their bush regeneration efforts last Friday. Perfect cool weather allowed us to continue lantana removal in our patch of critically endangered Shale Sandstone Transition Forest. Angus, Kyla and Emma from Blue Tongue Ecosystems came along to lend a hand and provide tools and expertise.

We came across some amazing incidental wildlife sightings including an old ringtail possum drey, two spotted pardalotes building their underground nest, a brush-tailed possum and our cute little shrike thrushes nesting again. The awareness and appreciation of nature by the students gave me hope that the next generation will look after our natural resources. We hope to see the students back here next term when we begin to replant some of the species that are missing from our patch of bush. Thanks to the Windsor to Weir funding which has now allowed us to remove lantana and plant native species along the Hawkesbury River below Brewongle and also begin work up the banks on Brewongle land.

Enjoy the photos!

A ringtail possum and homemade drey

Spotted pardalote nest building

Female spotted pardalote

Learning how to use tools

Removing lantana

Shrike thrush nest

Fixing up the Forest with Mt Druitt Tutorial School

There is something inherently satisfying about pulling out weeds – don’t you agree? Managing ecosystems is a tricky complex business, but pulling out and poisoning noxious problem plants like lantana is a real, hands on result orientated activity. You can see and measure progress and I swear I could hear the native plants sighing as we removed choking thickets of smelly, prickly lantana. Lantana is a garden plant (from South America originally) that causes major issues in our native bush. It can choke the shrub layer and even grow up into the canopy. It excludes native plants and changes local ecosystems – often to the detriment of the trees – see this information on Bell Miner Associated Dieback.

Angus Reynolds from Blue Tongue Ecosystems providing instruction.

We spent the day on Wednesday with Blue Tongue Ecosystems who are an excellent local bush regeneration company as well as some fantastic students and staff from Mt Druitt Tutorial School. The aim of the day was to remove as many weeds as we could from our surrounding bushlands and gardens. What an incredible job we all did! The students and staff took to the work with gusto, discovering how to use various tools and chemicals as well as avoiding too many lantana scratches. Thanks so much to Mt Druitt Tutorial School and we look forward to seeing you again in the future! A huge thanks to the staff of Blue Tongue who were professional, efficient and helped our property immensly.

Before…

After!

 

We have had an ongoing issue with weeds here at Brewongle. Our critically endangered Shale Sandstone Transition Forest is doing its best despite a long history of human disturbance. We have photos showing most of our forest was felled in the early 1900’s and has since regenerated to some degree. We seem to be missing a few species and have an ongoing problem with weed invasion. Many of our trees are not old enough to form tree hollows (which can take up to 100yrs to form) and hence we are missing some vital animal habitat also. To combat this in the short term we have installed many different bird and possum nest boxes to supplement the few tree hollows available.

Brewongle felled forest circa early 1900’s

Plenty of Possums for Tyndale Christian School

A Lace Monitor

The year 9 students of Tyndale Christian School in Blacktown were treated to a plethora of arboreal delights this week. Using our nest box cameras they explored various habitat boxes around Brewongle for signs of life. During their testing they discovered four possums, some feathers, nests, goanna scratchings, animal scats, clean water and a healthy forest  The students were enjoying our Lace Monitor science program for stage 5. This program encourages students to gather data on our local ecosystems here at Brewongle. The students then have to decide whether Brewongle has sufficient habitat and food sources to support a population of Lace Monitor lizards (also called Goanna’s.)

One video below shows some of the wildlife that the students captured on film and the other provides details on the Lace Monitor – one of the coolest predators in the forest.

 

Bring Back the Bush! with the 500 Schools Planting Program

       

Book now to involve your students in this fantastic program to ‘bring back the bush’ to Western Sydney. A great day out where students will contribute to their local environments by planting habitat trees to help the return of native animals. Stream bank planting will help protect and improve water quality. I would highly recommend this excursion for your class, green team or leadership group. They provide and pay for buses too!

Visit the website or follow the link below to register.

Click to access 500SchoolsPlantingProgram2014Stag3pdf.pdf

 

Spotted Quolls and Liverpool Girls High

Year 11 Biology students from Liverpool Girls High made the long trek to us this week. Many of them had not spent much time in the bush and enjoyed their time as ‘Ecologists’ studying the habitat of the elusive Spotted-Tailed Quoll.

Quoll quiz

Q1.  What do quolls eat?

Q2. What is their preferred habitat?

Q3. What are threats to the quoll?

Q4. Where do they like to go to the toilet?

Answers below!

During this day at Brewongle students utilise a wide variety of equipment to assess the local environment and discover it’s suitablity for the spotted tailed quoll. We have just taken delivery of some new Ipads and wireless connections to our GoPro cameras. These allow us to attach the cameras to long poles and peer into nest boxes high in trees. Students on the ground can view through an Ipad. A great way to find first hand evidence of food sources for the quoll. Go to our resources page for links to information on the quoll.

Quoll quiz answers

Q1. What do quolls eat? Rats, mice, bandicoots, birds, insects, frogs, possums, small wallabies!

Q2. What is their preferred habitat? Structurally diverse forests with rock crevices, tree hollows to make dens

Q3. What are threats to the quoll? Habitat loss and fragmentation, poisoning, shooting and road deaths.

Q4. Where do they like to go to the toilet? On a rocky outcrop! Quolls will return to the same toilet to do their business.

Here are some images that students took.