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Conservation education resources

Introduction

View a list of all our conservation education resources.

Te whio mō ake tonu atu – he rauemi mā ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori

Te whio mō ake tonu atu – he rauemi mā ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori

Kia Kaha te Reo Taiao posters and booklet

Poster | All levels: These posters and booklet include te reo Māori and English words and phrases about the environment: Te Ao o Tangaroa – Marine, Wai Māori – Fresh Water, Te Wao Nui a Tāne – flora, Te Tini a Tāne - fauna

Conservation Dogs Programme education resource

Inquiry unit | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to learn about conservation dogs, Predator Free 2050, biosecurity and how to take conservation action in your local community.

Protecting our marine world

Inquiry unit | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to learn how to protect our unique marine environment.

Teaching conservation across the New Zealand Curriculum

Guiding document | Primary and Secondary: This document provides ideas on how conservation can be incorporated across the New Zealand Curriculum, to support teachers with planning.

Teaching conservation across Te Whāriki

Guiding document | Early Childhood: This document aligns conservation teaching and learning experiences to Te Whāriki principles and strands, to support teachers with planning.

Exploring the local environment through the seasons

Year planner | Outdoor activities | All levels: This year planner has been designed to help teachers plan various conservation activities throughout the school year.

Opportunities for action around school and kindergarten

Guiding document | All levels: A list of conservation action ideas to support teachers to surround their students with as many positive experiences of being in nature as possible.

Restoration through the seasons

Poster | Outdoor activities | All levels: This poster has been designed to help teachers plan, implement and take action on restoration projects throughout the school year.

Tools for environmental action

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to plan and carry out successful environmental action, alongside your local community.

Enhancing biodiversity in your green space

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: This resource provides ideas and learning experiences to enhance the native and endemic biodiversity in your green space.

Investigating alpine environments - Years 9-13

Field trip | Levels: 5-8: This resource is designed to introduce secondary students to New Zealand’s extraordinary alpine environments, and support them to take action to help protect them.

Kākāpō Recovery education resource

Classroom activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to uncover why the kākāpō is so important to New Zealand.

Experiencing native trees in your green space

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to experience native trees in your school grounds or another local green space.

Wet Feet – investigating freshwater

Unit | Levels: 3-4: Wet Feet is about involving schools and communities in the care and restoration of freshwater systems.

Observing a royal albatross/toroa

Classroom activity | Levels: 1-4: Use these to support student viewing the albatross 'Royal cam'.

Investigating weeds in your green space

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to investigate weeds in your school grounds or another local green space.

Investigating introduced predators in your green space

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activity | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to investigate introduced predators in your school grounds or another local green space.

Uncle Don knows heaps of wacky stuff

Picture book | Levels: 1-3: Follow Sylvie as she takes a holiday with Uncle Don the DOC ranger and learns about New Zealand's plants and animals along the way.

Exploring your local environment

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to learn about and develop connections to a local green space.

Experiencing invertebrates in your green space

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to experience invertebrates (insects) in your school grounds or another local green space.

Experiencing birds in your green space

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: Use this resource to experience birds in your school grounds or another local green space.

Let’s be a tree

Classroom activity | Early childhood: A dramatic experiential game to feel the life in a tree.

Introducing biodiversity

Outdoor activity | Early childhood: Fun activities to introduce children to the concept of biodiversity (variety in nature).

Healthy water

Classroom activity | Early childhood: Play the 'making a rainstorm' game or create a collage to teach kids how living things use water.

Create a play area for outdoor exploration

Outdoor activity | Early childhood: Create a new play area in your centre/school grounds, to enable children to find out more about plants and animals in your local natural places.

Sensing nature activity

Outdoor activity | Early childhood: Get kids outdoors and exploring their environment using their five senses.

Toyota Kiwi Guardians

An activity programme designed to get kids off screens and into the outdoors. Learn about protecting our nature, earn cool rewards and go on epic adventures!

Create your own nature scrapbook

Outdoor activity | Art and craft | Early childhood: A nature scrapbook is a fun and creative activity that leaves you with somewhere to keep your treasured materials from nature.

Art and craft activities

Classroom activity | Art and craft | Early childhood: Do some colouring in, make a kaleidocycle, or create your own animal masks. These activities feature some of our most-loved native animals.

Whio Forever education resource

Inquiry unit | Levels: 1-4: Take your students on an amazing learning journey, discovering why the whio/blue duck is so important to New Zealand.

Tāiko/black petrel education resource

Inquiry unit | Levels: 2-4: This resource is an integrated unit of teaching and learning material about the tāiko/black petrel and other seabirds, for use in primary schools.

Marine mammals of New Zealand

Poster | All levels: This poster has details of the different types of whales, dolphins and seals in New Zealand and where they are found.

Wetland life

Poster: The wetland life poster features native species living in a lowland swamp – birds, fish, invertebrates and plants.

Fabulous facts about Auckland's wildlife

Poster | All levels: A series of posters to support learning about Auckland's unique animal life, and to encourage outdoor exploration.

Habitat Heroes: Explore your local stream

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: This resource supports outdoor exploration of a local stream. Investigate the health of a local stream, and decide what conservation actions would improve the health of a local stream.

Habitat Heroes: Explore your local marine environment

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: This resource supports outdoor exploration of a local marine environment. Investigate the health of a local marine environment, and decide what conservation actions would improve the health of a local marine environment.

Habitat Heroes: Explore your local green spaces

Inquiry unit | Outdoor activities | Levels: 1-4: This resource supports outdoor exploration of a local green space. Investigate the health of a local green space, and decide what conservation actions would improve the health of a local green space.

Rocky reef snorkel survey teaching resource

Field trip | Levels: 3-4: Learn about marine life, species identification and carry out a marine survey. This resource also includes swimming pool snorkel training.

Estuary survey

Field trip | Levels: 3-4: Learn about marine life and carry out a marine survey in a local estuary.

Freshwater board and card games

Classroom activity | Levels: 3-4: Learn about New Zealand’s wonderful freshwater ecosystems with these great board and card games brought to you by Hastings Central School.

Local field trips

Field trips & programmes | All levels: Select your region to find resources for field trips to local hot spots.

Meet the Locals videos

Online videos | All levels: Watch Meet the Locals videos to learn about New Zealand's unique plants and animals, habitats and the people working to protect them.

Blue duck/whio fun facts posters

Poster | All levels: These posters have fun facts about whio/blue duck, and why they are important.

They're oldies but goodies

Online videos | Unit | Levels: 3-4: Explore the reasons for retaining and maintaining treasures from the past (hisorical sites).

The reptiles

Online videos | Unit | Levels: 3-4: Explore the features of some of our most endangered reptiles and the recovery programmes, techniques and technology that is helping them survive.

The big friendly giants - the giant wētā

Online videos | Unit | Levels: 3-4: Find out how the wētā evolved, why it's threatened and how we are protecting this ancient insect. Students will see why the wētā is unique, assess recovery plans and find out how to improve living conditions for wētā in their own backyard.

Shake, rattle and roll

Online videos | Unit | Levels: 3-4: Explore some of New Zealand's volcanic geology, the consequences from their eruptions and the effect on local biodiversity. This resource also looks at the impacts of eco-tourism.

Our own gold coast

Online videos | Unit | Levels: 3-4: Explore the importance of sand dunes and the impact of losing them. Find out about the largest coastal plant protection programme in the southern hemisphere.

A bird in the hand

Online videos | Unit | Levels: 3-4: Explore the features of some of our most endangered birds and the recovery programmes, techniques and technology that is helping them survive.

Coastal surveys teaching resource

Field trips | Levels 3-4: Learn about your local marine and coastal environment through an estuary or rocky shore survey.

Birdbrain CD by Fatcat & Fishface

Music | Levels: 1-3: This CD features 13 original songs in honour of our unique native birds.

Harbours, bays and estuaries teaching resource

Unit | Levels: 3-4: Learn about the species that depend on our estuaries - the places where freshwater and saltwater meet.

Up the Creek

Classroom activity | Levels: 3-4: By focusing on the life cycle of whitebait, this bilingual online resource introduces concepts about biodiversity in freshwater, in a context that is relevant for students.

LEARNZ virtual field trips

Online videos: LEARNZ virtual field trips are an engaging, curriculum-linked opportunity for students to experience some of New Zealand's special places.

Seabirds factsheets

Factsheets | Levels: 2-4: Explore the lives of seabirds and investigate the impact humans have on the ecology of seabirds, and the role seabirds play in their environment.

River life: ecology of the braided rivers education resource

Unit | Levels: 4-7: This resource is based on braided rivers in the Mackenzie basin, but the concepts can be applied to rivers anywhere in New Zealand. Students will research topics such as disappearing river habitat, pest control, and food chains.

Preservation versus use

Classroom activity | Levels: 2-4: This activity introduces students to various ways people view and use our natural environments differently, and how people make decisions about access to and use of resources.

Possum picnic activity

Outdoor activity | Levels: 2-4: This activity is designed to introduce and re-enforce ideas about the impact of animal pests. It could also be used for plant pests, and to show the relationships between living things in a community.

Land deed

Classroom activity | Levels: 4-5: This activity asks students to imagine they have the deed to their very own forest and their mission is to encourage native wildlife to the area.

Forest structure

Outdoor activity | Levels: 1-3: This outdoor activity encourages students think about the forest structure by comparing it to a house.

Forest ecosystems

Classroom activity | Levels: 2-4: This activity introduces the concepts of ecosystems, biodiversity and interdependence within the forest community, and human influences on these.

Build a tree

Outdoor activity | Levels: 1-4 : Build a tree is a fun way to demonstrate how a tree functions.

Biodiversity activity

Classroom activity | Levels: 2-4: This activity will introduce students to the concept of variety in nature.

Action plan activity

Classroom activity | Levels 2-8: Students will participate in an action research project around a topic related to a local, national or global environmental issue, and gain an awareness of peoples’ attitudes and values related to this.

Related

With children

Find conservation activities you can do with children.

National education programmes

DOC supports a range of education programmes that get people involved with and promote conservation.

Useful websites

Find other New Zealand websites that support conservation teaching and learning.

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