Circular School Eco Club

For today’s session, we delved deeper into our inquiries and projects. For our group, we chose the following inquiries:  Can mangrove plants be grown in garden soil?  What is the relation between salinity and growth in mangrove plants? And the following projects: Mangrove Adaptations Mangroves and Climate Resilience The session began with our vocabulary words: Then, we discussed some of the issues faced by the educators, and after, went ahead with the first speaker of the day, Jacob. The three widespread types of mangroves in the region                                 Jacob spoke about the local species of Mangroves in the Gladstone region, and how they’re differentiated from one another by the underside of the leaf. The milky mangrove leaf is glassy green, easily identified by its seeds/ berries which come in a heart shape. The yellow mangrove plants have a yellow tinge on the underside of their l...

Today's session was all about creating a project from what we observed during the field trip last week. We learnt some important words that would help with the process. Next, we learned how to create experiments from the questions we want answers to though the change - measure - same method:  Change- Which factor do you want to find out more about? Change that factor with periodically. Eg., if you want to know the effect of salt on mangroves, change the amount of salt in your experiment. Measure- Measure any changes in the system you want to observe every time you change this factor. Eg., in the same example mentioned above, measure changes in leaf size/ stem width, etc. Same- Ensure that all other factors in the experiment - temperature, approximate size/ age of plant, etc. are the same throughout. Now all we have to do is choose one of the questions we want answered: - Does heat affect mangroves? - How does salt concentration affect mangrove plants?  - Are mangroves negative...

For session 2 of 'The Mangrove Life' with Pikiji Learning, Australia and The Pomegranate Workshop, we were to conduct a field trip to a mangrove. Because of its proximity to the school, we chose Batim, which is only a short bus ride away. When we did our recce of the place, we didn't expect to be as amazed as we were by the sheer beauty of the landscape  We got ready on Tuesday evening with our pens, books, water bottles, observation charts and phone cameras. 13 students, Vishal, Elijah and I reached the spot at 4pm, a wonderfully pleasant time to be at any mangrove. We began with a short introduction and explanation of the khazan farming system and sluice gates by Vishal. After this, we explored the vast expanse that is the Batim mangroves, and looked out for anything we found interesting. Some interesting finds by the students: Mangrove holly, telescope snail shells at various stages of disrepair and a large crab pincer, all observed by Mohammad from class 9 A crab, obser...

We had the brilliant opportunity to do a 5 session programme with Pikiji Learning, Australia* and The Pomegranate Workshop*.  The programme is called 'The Mangrove Life' and is based around mangrove ecosystems and the indigenous knowledge around them. We felt the programme was ideal for a state like Goa, which is so rich in mangroves but is also struggling to keep them alive.  The programme is especially awesome in a school like FAHS, where we have lots of students living in very close association with mangroves - many of them even participate in fishing! The first session of the programme was conducted on Saturday via Zoom. While our internet connection was pretty bad, we still learnt a lot about the biotic, abiotic, and physical factors, etc. that contribute to creating an ecosystem.  There were a total of 22 attendees, from the 5th - 9th. Our next session will be a field trip to a nearby mangrove!  A few pics of our site: * Pikiji Learning is a First Nations Commu...

This session was at a completely different pace than normal. Lots of the Eco-Club members had to go for hockey practice, so we had a small class of 6 to work with. The idea for this session was to build on the planting session last week in a fun and engaging way. We wanted to plan a session around what can be found in a garden environment, to learn about what's good for the plants we grow and what isn't.  Before the session, we had a chat within our small circle - Why did you join the Eco-Club?, What do you like about nature? We had the chance to have a much more candid conversation considering the smaller number. We got to learn that Mohammad S. and Valencio both catch snakes. Valencio said that he doesn't like that his parents kill snakes when they catch them, and he tells them not to, but they don't listen. Mohammad also grows vegetables in his house. So far he's grown turmeric in his kitchen garden. He had 2 coconuts in his bag to give to his friend for Dussehra...

This session was all about growing. We started with an introduction to feelings - how can we express how we feel about the sessions? We used colours, drawing and words to describe how we felt about the session. Next, we had a session on growing by Elijah, who's an agriculturist from Anjuna.                                                   He brought seeds of different types and asked the teams to guess the names for extra points. The students guessed cucumber, spinach and tambdi bhaji.                                           Each student got 4 paper cups and was asked to fill them with cocopeat. We then went to the garden and mixed our cocopeat with vermicompost and placed our seeds in the mixture. There were lots of seeds to choose from - raddish, kare...