Hi everyone,
I’d like to officially welcome you to the River Detectives program for 2022. Be proud that you are one of 97 schools from across the state educating our future environmental leaders with thousands of students learning about waterway and catchment health.
Introductory workshops are being rolled out across the state and we hope it is helping you feel invigorated and ready to start !
We have a great River Detectives team to support you. I’m sure you’ve all spoken to or met your local coordinator already . . .
- North East CMA region; Simon Muller
- Wimmera CMA region; Jeanie Clark
- Corangamite CMA region; Kristen Lees, Deirdre Murphy and Robyn Vale
- North Central CMA region and statewide support; Nicole Howie
- Melbourne Water area; Jane Petch
The River Detectives website is your one-stop shop for all waterway health resources, teacher planning, student research, water quality testing support, data entry, data analysis and program communication. The Resource River Bank tab is publicly accessible (no login required) so it’s also a very handy tool for colleagues at your school, other schools and for your students to use at home or to share learnings with their family.
Billabong Banter posts; Throughout the year we will highlight our resources and the way you might like to use them in conjunction with environmental special days. This will help you link waterway education with community celebrations and embed it across the curriculum. You will receive an email notification when new content is posted.
We are aware that many teachers plan their term during the preceding school holidays so you will see a flurry of posts over the next week for events occurring in Term 2. If you plan as you go, feel free to ignore them at the time and file them away in an email folder for later.
Themed activity matrices; Please check out the Dive Deeper tab of the website for a suite of wonderful matrices for teacher/student use. We have recently added a new matrix with a “Water Cycle and Water Quality” theme that we highly recommend as the perfect way to introduce students to the program and assist their foray into testing each month.
Opportunities from the broader environmental network; You may also be interested in these initiatives that landed in our inbox recently . .
- My Victorian Waterway Survey: This survey is a piece of social research conducted by the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP). The survey is designed for any Victorian who visits a waterway, which refers to any river, stream, creek, floodplain, wetland, estuary, lake, water storage or reservoir. It should take only 10 minutes to complete, and it will be open from 23 March 2022 to 17 April 2022. It is suitable for secondary students or you may wish to fill it out yourself.
- Regenerating Australia – Host a free movie screening at your school: This 17 minute short film by award winning director Damon Gameau (That Sugar Film, 2040) is an inspiring watch for students and teachers to address the difficult topic of climate change. Set on New Year’s Eve December 2029, a news anchor is ending the nightly bulletin with a look back at the decade ‘that could be’; a decade that saw Australia transition to a fairer, cleaner, more community focused economy. Full of innovative ideas it’s a wonderful conversation starter and confidence builder that clever Australians are indeed thinking about addressing climate change in this critical decade. Suitable for upper primary and secondary students with accompanying learning materials available for students from year 7 to 10.
