Guest speaker - our catchment

Focus

The aim of this activity is to provide students with information on water catchments, the use of natural resources within a catchment area, particularly their local catchment area.

Science

Earth and Beyond

3.3 Students collect information that describes ways in which living things use the Earth and the sun as resources.

4.1 Students recognise and analyse some interactions (including the weather) between systems of Earth and beyond.

Life and Living

3.3 Students describe some interactions (including feeding relationships) between living things and between living and non-living parts of the environment.

SOSE

Place and Space

PS 2.2 Students predict possible consequences for an ecological system when an element is affected.

Systems, Resources and Power

SRP 3.1 Students make inferences about interactions between people and natural cycles, including the water cycle.

English

Create a table of information.
Writing thank you letters.
Vote of thanks.

Maths

Measuring the area of a catchment.

Materials

map, photo of local catchment area
displayed list of possible land uses
requirements from the guest speaker
Resource Sheet 4 – Resource use within the local catchment area (PDF, 62K)*

Teaching considerations

Someone from your regional natural resource management body, local catchment, landcare or conservation groups, or local government catchment officers involved in healthy waterways may be available as a guest speaker.

Let your guest speaker know of the students’ current level of understanding and give examples of what you mean. Negotiate a format for the talk/visit.

Prior to the visit, give the students the opportunity to prepare questions for the guest speaker. Give these questions to the guest speaker when you negotiate the format of the talk, so that the speaker can adequately prepare and bring appropriate resources.

Organise students to meet your guest speaker at administration block/office/school gate and organise students to give a vote of thanks to the guest speaker.

A large range of tourist, historical, topographic maps, posters, aerial and historical photos and land information is available from your nearest Deparmental service centre.

Science processes

observing
gathering information

SOSE processes

understand
think
communicate

Sequence

Time: 40-60 minutes

Orientating

Review the purpose and content of the talk/presentation and check students have ready access to their questions.

Arrange the class and students ready for your guest speaker.

Introduce your guest speaker.

Enhancing

Let the guest speaker talk to the class.

During the presentation the teacher notes the natural resources within the local water catchment area.

Synthesising

Let student/s thank the guest speaker and thank them for any posters, maps etc they were able to leave with you.

Discuss with the students the natural resources that exist in the catchment and the ways in which they are being used. Complete a table that lists these details. See Resource Sheet 4.

Collect (and display) any resources available from the guest speaker.

Students could also complete the following sentence starters such as:

A water catchment is……
I live in the….. catchment area.
The natural resources used in my local water catchment area are…..

Additional learning

Students write a thank you letter to the guest speaker.

Gathering information about student learning

Sources of information could include:

anecdotal notes on any student alternative conceptions and corrections of previous conceptions.
example of student’s work, for example a table of natural resources and uses.

* Requires Adobe Reader

Last updated 3 September 2010