BUILDING ECOLOGICAL LITERACY: A PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP FOR EDUCATORS

Monday 16th May 2016, 9am – 3:30pm

In today’s world, alienation from nature is documented to be increasingly affecting children’s emotional well-being, physical health and learning abilities; and on a larger scale, is contributing to the critical global challenges we are facing as a society. Outdoor learning using experience-based strategies can address these issues and be used to build an ‘ecological literacy’ – that is, to have an understanding of the natural systems that make life on earth possible. These strategies also engage students in their own environments, increase engagement with learning, foster ecological stewardship and positively impact on environmental behaviors. They also support the application of the cross-curriculum priority area of Sustainability in the Australian Curriculum.

This workshop will:
Demonstrate how outdoor experiential activities can be linked to the curriculum in English, Science, Geography, Maths, and the Arts;
Give examples of how the Australian Curriculum cross-curriculum priority area of Sustainability and simple themes of ecology can be embedded in teaching across the Learning Areas;
Introduce you to approaches from Deep Ecology and Place-Based Education that you can use with your students to increase their ecological literacy and stewardship;
Explore how these approaches can support students to have the knowledge, understandings and skills to engage in creating a more sustainable world.
The workshop is focused on primary school teachers, but the material can also apply to secondary teachers.

For more details visit: http://www.nscf.org.au/school-tours/workshops-for-teachers/