Take Action for Water is an innovative and exciting environmental education programme to help primary and intermediate school students (year 5-8) investigate and explore their local environment.

Resources were developed by Greater Wellington Regional Council to help teachers educate young people about the importance of the environment. The Take Action for Water programme aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills to make informed environmental decisions in daily life. Students not only learn about environmental issues, they do something about them. Take Action empowers young people to become environmental role models by making a real difference in their schools, families and communities.

Take Action for Water is a teacher guided programme which consists of comprehensive teaching and learning resources. The programme is hands on, is based on the Guidelines for Environmental Education for New Zealand Schools and is integrated with the curriculum.

Take Action for Water focuses on water catchments and the ecosystems they contain especially freshwater stream ecosystems and water pollution. It investigates the relationships between the living parts of the ecosystem and the impact we have on it. It shows how we can act to reduce our impacts and help to restore the processes and functions of these ecosystems.

Programme overview

Take Action for Water is an in-depth unit of teaching and learning for Year 5 – 8 students. It is an integrated programme of work that is intended to be completed over the course of a term. Take Action for Water reflects both the ‘New Zealand Curriculum’ and the ‘Environmental Education Guidelines for New Zealand Schools’.

The programme structure scaffolds new learning for students. They begin by learning about Native Ecosystems before moving on to understand how Human Impacts have negatively impacted on these ecosystems. The Explore Day then gives students the opportunity to experience first hand both pristine and degraded stream environments. Using their new knowledge and understanding students are then able to Take Action for local biodiversity in meaningful ways.

The different sections of the programme and resources for each section are outlined below:

Updated September 30, 2022 at 4:40 PM

Get in touch

Phone:
0800 496 734
Email:
info@gw.govt.nz