Earth Day is popular with younger students, but it can be challenging to integrate Earth Day activities within the high school program and generate interest amongst older students.
One great option is to explore citizen science projects conservation which exist within your local communities and school neighbourhood.
Citizen science involves local community members doing things like observing birds and animals, collecting data and working on hands on projects to support local wildlife.
Projects integrate well with topics in maths and science, with students able to learn about fieldwork, scientific observation methods and working with data and statistics as part of their projects.
They also lend themselves well to digital and creative arts learning areas, with students able to build on science-based lessons and apply visual and creative skills to what they learn.
For older students, it’s important to make strong and meaningful connections between what they learn in class and the real-world application.
This helps projects become much more than just a classroom exercise, and gives them real impact for students. So how well do school based projects stack up in terms of scientific evidence and outcomes that can be used by scientists?
Zoology research graduate Eirene Carajias says that data ‘needs to be collected using a consistent experimental methodology to maximise the reliability of trends that may emerge from the data.’
Carajias plans to work in conservation to help effectively breed, reintroduce, and translocate threatened species and reduce their risk of extinction in Australia.
She suggests schools collect data in partnership with local citizen science projects to ensure the data is useable in broader conservation research.
She has recently been working on a project using a unique method of data collection called bio-acoustics, which monitors for animals based on sound rather than visual observations.
Her research involved placing arrays of audio recording devices in the field to monitor for a bird species called the Australasian bittern, found in wetlands in Victoria.
She explains this is a really useful method because ‘some species can be really challenging to observe in their habitats due to physical or behavioural adaptations that make them elusive, or ‘cryptic’, in nature.’
Bio-acoustics is a helpful way of finding evidence that a species exists in a particular location.
While bio-acoustics might not be a viable option for many schools, it does give an insight into the future work of zoologists working to protect threatened species across the country.
There are lots of interesting ways of applying hands-on learning skills to citizen science projects to celebrate Earth Day. Here are just a few to try:
- High school science students can learn about bio-acoustics by doing some self-guided research, or completing a web quest in class before planning their own audio recording project in their school.
- During a maths session, learn to apply data collection and skills in creating graphs, tables and charts to make visual representations of the information collected during a citizen science project.
- Create high impact visual displays, posters or articles to encourage other students to monitor for particular species in the local community or to take positive actions to help during Earth Day.
- Upload data to a local or Australia-wide citizen science project on a platform such as iNaturalist so it can be accessed and used by real scientists working on threatened species conservation.
- Write a persuasive text about actions that can be taken locally to protect a threatened species in your area.
- Analyse data that has been collected then write a discussion and conclusion based on the data.
- Invite a guest speaker to visit the school and talk about their work in zoology, conservation, sustainability or climate action so students can learn about new career options and pathways into further study and work, or ask them questions about their own pathway from school into research, conservation action, habitat restoration or project management.
Making local links with citizen science projects and discovering more about the birds and animals which live in your area is a great way of building hands-on, practical maths and science skills while also developing a deeper understanding of community.
Earth Day can be a great opportunity for students to become involved in local projects in many different areas of science.
Who knows – you might just find you have the next Jane Goodall or David Attenborough just waiting to discover their passion!
