Environments - PEST & WEED CONTROLLER

Australia's Introduced Species: Pest or Resource? A Matter of Degrees - A philosophical exercise

Primary Middle  Secondary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding

Australian Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities: Sustainability Priority

Philosophy

Cooperative Learning Activity

Teacher: Procedure for Activity

The activity takes one lesson (45 - 60 minutes). Additional lesson if you watch this video:  Invaders – Feral Animals & Pests in Australia
https://youtu.be/TmYld25z-JU [but it is 21minutes long and old!]

This activity is about "Distinction Making" used in Philosophy in Schools and inspired by Prof. Phil Cam.

1. View and print the procedure for this activity [Word doc].

2. You are going to print up these 30 examples of Introduced species and have them laminated - one side shows the picture and the other side has detailed information about this introduced species and their effect on the environment and ability to be a resource or not.

3. Place a cord or line across the floor - allow a significant space for the students to place their laminated card on the line. At one end of the cord/line, put the word “Pest”. At the other end of the cord/line, put the word “Resource” in large letters.

4. Divide the class into groups of three or pairs and give each person within the group at least one laminated card. 

5. Give the groups a few minutes to read and discuss their cards.

Here are some examples of the 30 introduced species:

6. Now ask for a group that took one of their cards to belong toward one end of the spectrum to place that card where they think it belongs, and invite the group to present the reasons for its decision. Do not embark upon further discussion at this stage. There will be an opportunity to do so later.

7. Do the same for a group that took one of their cards to belong toward the other end of the spectrum.

8. Then proceed to get all the other groups to place their cards with reasons to be stated briefly. No two species can be at the same place on the spectrum.

9. If members of the pair or group are unable to agree upon where to place their card, they will be asked to give their reasons but to withhold their card. Call upon other members of the class to assist any such groups to sort the matter out.

10. As students enter into discussion and begin to explore their disagreements, it is generally useful for the students to pass a Speakers’ Ball from speaker to speaker to help establish appropriate behaviour in relation to speaking and listening.

11.

Discuss disagreements as time permits, intervening when necessary to keep the discussion focused and to assist students to uncover any general conditions or considerations that make some cases better or worse than others. Discussion is now open for the whole group to look at the placement of all the cards. Are they in the order the students think they should be?

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH - The Next Chapter

Primary Middle 

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Literacy

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding

1. You have all probably read "Mrs.Frisby and the Rats of NIMH".  This book was made into a movie, "The Secret of NIMH".

(Source: Comingsoon.net)

Here is a summary of the story from Shmoop:

"Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is the gripping tale of a community of animals living happily together on a farm. Lest you think this is a tale only for lovers of the order Rodentia (which means rodent, for those of you who don't speak Latin), though, never fear: there are also cats, crows, owls, and shrews. Thrown in for good measure are some humans who mostly just get in the way and cause problems for all of the more loveable characters. Typical!

The novel tells two stories at once: the story of widowed Mrs. Frisby and her struggles to protect her family, and the story of a group of highly trained, super smart rats. (They're the Jason Bournes of the rodent world, but without the violence. Or the never ending sequels.) Mrs. Frisby's story unfolds in real time, while most of the rats' story occurs in flashbacks, as they tell their story to Mrs. Frisby.

The novel opens with kind, sweet Mrs. Frisby in a load of trouble: her delicate son Timothy is burning up with a serious fever and a terrible cough. Luckily, Mrs. Frisby consults a wise white mouse named Mr. Ages who is a real whiz at making up medicinal powders. Soon, Timothy is out of danger from his sickness, but troubles for this family are only just beginning.

During the winter, the mice live in a cozy cinderblock in a farmer's field. Normally when the weather gets warm the farmer plows the field near their house, so they move to their summerhouse by the river. (Lucky mice with their waterfront view!) This year, however, Timothy is too weak to be moved and the warm weather is fast approaching. So Mrs. Frisby befriends a crow, Jeremy, who takes her to visit the forests' wisest animal, an old Owl. The Owl tells her that he can't help her, but that she should go to visit the rats. This turns out to be very sage advice.

Totally freaking out, Mrs. Frisby does as she's told and pays the nearby rat colony a visit. At first, they want nothing to do with her. Until, that is, she mentions that her name is Mrs. Frisby. Their little ears perk right up at this and all of a sudden, she is whisked away to their leader, Nicodemus. After some discussion, the rats agree to help her move her house out of danger. Mrs. Frisby is left with two questions: Why do they want to help her? and How on earth did these rats get so smart? The answers to these questions become clear as soon as the rats begin to tell her their story. Flashback alert!

YouTube: The Secret of NIMH (7/9) Movie CLIP - The Secret is Revealed (1982) HD
https://youtu.be/1OV3T6GWhIg

The rats tell Mrs. Frisby a wild story about being captured and taken to some scary labs (NIMH stands for the National Institute of Mental Health, which is a real place, by the way) where they are experimented on, learn to read, get super brilliant, and eventually escape from captivity. They travel for a long time before they settle down on the farm where they meet Mrs. Frisby. Yet even though they have everything they need at the farm, the rats aren't satisfied. They want to live without stealing, and so they develop the Plan.

The Plan sounds like a new fad diet, but it is actually a roadmap for the rats' new civilization—a civilization in which they will grow their own food, make their own tools, and be totally independent. Mrs. Frisby's first question is answered as well, when she learns that her deceased husband, Jonathan, escaped with the rats from NIMH. (This means that he also had special abilities, though he never told Mrs. Frisby about them.)

Things are tense for the rats and for the Frisbys as the book nears the end. For a while, it seems like nobody will get what they want: it appears that the cinder block will not be moved and that the rats may be recaptured by those same nasty scientists who kidnapped them in the first place. But, owing to some extreme acts of bravery on the part of Mrs. Frisby and several of the lead rats, everything works out in the end. The house is moved and the rats begin to implement the Plan in a beautiful mountain spot, far, far, away from pesky humans." (Source: Shmoop)

2. You are to tell a sequel to this tale about the Exterminators [Pest Controller Officers] and the Rats of NIMH. Mrs. Frisby's children or grandchildren can be involved.

3. Write up the story using a Storyboard found on this page.

4. Using a Cartoon creator, make ONE small chapter in your story. 

Alternative Weed Control - Create an experiment!

Primary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Numeracy

Cooperative Learning Activity

Teacher

Very important notice: The home recipe below is toxic to pets and children so it needs to be stored correctly under the supervision of a parent or carer or teacher (if you are doing this experiment at school)

Students

1. Look at the way a Science Experiment is conducted (below) and follow the process.

To conduct and write up a Science Experiment, you follow the following steps:

a. Aim - define the question to investigate.

b. Hypothesis - make predictions

c. Procedure - gather data

d. Results - analyse the data

e. Conclusion - draw conclusions

2. We all have weeds in our gardens! To protect our environment and get rid of weeds different recipes have been created.

You are about to test an effective herbicide recipe without using harsh chemicals to see if it really works on those weeds! You are also going to test each component of the herbicide recipe - is one component more effective than another?

With this information, write up an Aim.

Compare with a partner. You can change your aim if you need to.

3. You are to look at the following article's picture (below) and note down the recipe for killing weeds.

It contains 3 ingredients:

a. Vinegar

b. Salt

c. Washing up detergent.

 
(Source: Consumer Notice)

As you can see, this recipe doesn't tell you which type of vinegar or salt or washing up detergent. You are to find out what is the most effective in killing weeds!

4. Is this alternative recipe effective? Which ingredient do you think will have the most effect? Write up why you think this - give reasons. This is called your Hypothesis.

5. In your home garden, you are to pick 5 patches of weeds - hopefully the same type but that is secondary to your experiment. Take a photograph of each patch. Make sure the patches have some distance between them.

With a partner, decide how you will tackle the weed problem like a scientist. Remember, you have five patches of weeds - one of these weed patches has to have nothing done to it. This is called your control.

You are to conduct this experiment over 2 weeks.

Label each patch - Control, Vinegar, Salt, Washing Up Detergent, and, Alternative Recipe.

To give you a better idea of the effect of different brands and types of ingredients, your partner is to have different vinegar, salt and detergent to you.

Decide what brands or types of ingredients you have at home that is different to your partner. Use different ones in your experiment.

This process is called your Procedure

6. Results.

Fill out the following table in your notebook:

Compare your results with your partner. Are they the same? Why? Why not?

How do you compare your results? Size of patch of weeds - before and after?

7. As a class group, get together with the other students who have the same vinegar, salt type, and washing up detergent. Put your photographs from Day 1, then Day 7 and finally Day 14 together. Did you all get the same results? Why? Why not?

8. How did the alternative recipe (all three ingredients) kill the weeds compare to the individual components (vinegar, salt, detergent)?

This is your Analysis.

9. Conclusion.

State your results, the class results and compare it to your hypothesis. Were there other factors that you would need to take into account next time you conducted this experiment?

What is your conclusion to this experiment? Did your experiment answer your Aim?

Other activities around pests - on this website: On the Job

Conservator	Pests - particularly insect pests can damage museums   Primary Middle  Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking
Entomologist	Banning of Pesticides Middle  Secondary Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking Australian Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities: Sustainability Priority