Meet the Researchers - Who are the people researching
biodiversity issues in northern Australia?
What do scientists/researchers do? Students illustrate their
ideas. Pair up to share.
Students explore Meet the
Researchers section.
Pairs revisit original ideas and incorporate new knowledge.
Pairs/small groups choose one of the researchers to investigate
an issue focusing on science at work and possible solutions.
Students complete told me/made me wonder – enabling
students to formulate questions.
Students then categorise their questions
e.g:
- those they can answer through firsthand observations (e.g.,
What do ….. eat? ).
- those they can answer by looking at measurable data
- those they can answer by conducting an experiment ( Will
…….? ).
- those they can answer by reading information from books or
articles.
- those they think scientists/researchers could best answer
.
- those that are speculative ( Why don't more people care
about protecting habitats.) These can't be readily answered by
any of the above, but students might suggest alternative means such
as conducting surveys or setting up a role-play exercise.
Students with an interest in similar questions could be grouped.
Groups could develop a proposal describing how they would go about
answering questions and present their plans to peers for
review.
Join the Researchers - What's happening to the northern quoll
in Kakadu National Park?
Students complete Join the
Researchers section
1. Quoll files
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2. Download report template
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1. Quoll files — background and hypothesis
Offline students can access "The Cane Toad Risk
Assessment" article (see Resources in right hand column) that
provide further background information.
The "Three-level Guide" that accompanies this article will help
learners gain a deeper understanding of the text. It will help them
to make judgments about, or challenge concepts or ideas in the text
and relate these ideas and concepts to other contexts.
2. Download the "My Scientific Report" template.
The template has sentence starters, prompts and graphs to
support students. Another more generic Scientific Report template
is available to suit student needs (see Resources in right hand
column). Through the process of deconstructing a scientific report,
the key features can be recorded as a starting point for jointly
developing a rubric for this task.
3. Make a plan 
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4. Field trip
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Students complete these sections.
5. Results
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6. Act on research
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Students explore these sections.
5. Results
An Excel file of the original data (from which the graphs are
derived) is available in the Resources (in the right hand column).
Students could create their own graphs from this data or manipulate
it and analyse it in other ways.
6. Research Recommendations in Action
Teachers might like to use the "Island Ark" article (in the
right-hand column) and appropriate strategies to help learners
develop a deeper understanding of the text.
