Wetland education products

The Queensland Wetlands Program, in partnership with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, has produced a range of interactive education and awareness-raising products dedicated to building community understanding of the importance of wetland ecosystem, particularly the Great Barrier Reef catchments.

The following educational products and information resources are helping to highlight the importance of maintaining healthy inland and coastal wetlands in the Great Barrier Reef catchment.

Intensive 10-week field-based wetlands curriculum

The Our Wetlands — a field-based research unit allows teachers to undertake an intensive wetland module across one full term of teaching. The module covers all contemporary areas of teaching for Queensland schools.

The students immerse themselves in wetland topics and develop field assessment skills. They develop a complete appreciation of the importance of wetlands, and understand the part they play in maintaining and conserving wetlands.

The unit also has a Storythread developed by Pullenvale Environmental Centre, as well as a Catchment role play game.

The curriculum has been implemented at Townsville Central State School, Rasmussen State School in Townsville, and Tewantin State School, near Noosa. To see some examples of the Tewantin students’ work and photographs of their tree-planting excursions click here.

Townsville Central State School students, who piloted the curriculum, applied their learnings over the ten weeks during a two-day canoe trip along Ross River and Stuart Creek in Townsville. They sampled water quality, soil, vegetation, macro invertebrates, and recorded adjacent land-use and site descriptions Photos.

For information about how your school can get involved in the wetlands curriculum, contact the Queensland Wetlands Program Communications Manager at wetlands♲derm.qld.gov.au.

Wetlands Reef Beat

The curriculum unit Wetlands Reef Beat is a detailed and comprehensive teaching resource. The unit is for middle–upper primary students. It addresses outcomes specified in Education Queensland’s Science and Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE).

The unit includes a curriculum focus derived from the Science and SOSE syllabus and sample activities encompassing a variety of appropriate teaching and learning strategies. A testimonial from a teacher who reviewed the product follows.

I enjoyed going through the Wetlands education package. It is excellent because it is logical and specific. Outcomes are listed to year level, concepts and tools are explained. Therefore, when teachers and students are working through the unit of work they will be able to easily follow the steps. I will be using the package in our next unit with Year 7. — Stephen Gauci

Exploring our wetlands

This is an informative and interactive software program that helps the user understand why wetlands are important, particularly for the Great Barrier Reef, and how they function. Information is broken into five sections: what is a wetland; what wetlands mean to us; wetland connectivity to the reef, threats to wetlands, and information on local wetlands. Each section has information or games.

Visit Exploring our wetlands.

Exploring Wetlands web quest — a virtual classroom

The Exploring Wetlands web quest is an inquiry-oriented activity. All of the information accessed by users comes from resources on the Internet. The web quest encourages students to consider wetlands as valuable habitats worth understanding and conserving.

During their web quest, participants are taken to a virtual wetland – an activity many will not have experienced. During their visit, participants perform water quality monitoring protocols, ascertain the water quality of the wetland and make suggestions on what could or should be done to improve areas of poor water quality.

Feedback from students and teachers that have participated in the web quest has been very positive.

While designed for school students, the tool is broad enough to suit a range of users. The site will help the user develop an understanding about habitat, food chains and the effect of human activity on wetland areas.

Visit Exploring Wetlands.

Visit Exploring Local Wetlands.

Wetlands Reef Beat series

A series of educational posters, designed to support a reef-awareness activity resource, were developed through this project to add to the suite of education products.

The popular poster and activity booklet feature on www.reefed.edu.au — a website accessed daily by both national and international students, teachers and public.

More than 1000 sets of Reef Beat posters and 400 booklets have been disseminated to date, with more orders being processed every day.

Regional newspapers feature the ten posters in the education section of their papers over ten weeks, and include a scrapbook for readers. Participating newspapers are the Townsville Bulletin, Bundaberg News Mail, Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, Gladstone Observer, Mackay Daily Mercury and the Cairns Post.

Wetlands Exhibit in ReefHQ Aquarium

A living Wetlands Exhibit has been created at Reef HQ Aquarium, in Townsville, Queensland.  Reef HQ is the world’s largest living coral reef aquarium and national education centre for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

The vibrant living exhibition was created to develop community appreciation for the important role coastal wetlands play in sustaining the ecological balance of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem.

The Wetlands Exhibit provides visitors with an opportunity to experience and view a typical catchment area, from the upper catchment to the Reef. This experience is reinforced by a magnificent mural that complements the living exhibit.

The Wetlands Exhibit represents a scaled catchment with an upper waterfall flowing into a stream, then into a billabong and finally into the Reef which is represented by Reef HQ Aquarium’s three million litre living Coral Reef Exhibit. These ecosystems contain endemic species. The exhibit has been designed so visitors can view a cross-section of these areas, making it possible to see what a watercourse looks like under the surface.

In the upper catchment, viewing pods allow the visitor to see stony creek frogs and common green frogs as they might live in a rocky, damp environment. Visitors can also get up close to other animals and plants that call wetlands home such as black catfish, mangrove jack, coral grunter, hyrtle tandan, lesser salmon catfish, freshwater catfish, seven spot archerfish, eastern rainbowfish, fly speckled hardyhead, saratoga, empire gudgeon and purple-spotted gudgeon.

The exhibit is achieving its goal of encouraging the 120,000 annual visitors to Reef HQ Aquarium to think about the impacts that human activities are having on wetlands and the types of things they can do to better protect these important ecosystems. By ensuring we have healthy wetlands in our catchments we are helping to improve the quality of water reaching the Great Barrier Reef.