CERESEnvironment Park

Anne Cheung,Isobel Fogale &

Samantha Hickman

http://www.ceres.org.au/home.html

What is CERES?• A 10 acre urban farm, community and

education hub – an eco-oasis, 7km from Melbourne’s city centre.’

• A learning centre providing education excursion programs that support AusVELS.

http://sustainability.ceres.org.au

What’s on Site at CERES?• Energy Park

• Organic market & grocery

• CERES Café

• Eco House

• Multicultural Villages

• Green Technology Hub

• Chook area

• Nursery/propagation

• Bike Shed

• Honey Lane Market Garden

• Dam

• Community Gardens

• Amphitheatre

• CERES Van Raay Centre

ActivitiesActivity 1: Wurundjeri-willam clan

- After touring the CERES Aboriginal Trail, students will have formed knowledge on traditional rituals that the Wurundjeri-willam clan took part in as well as the roles of the men, women and children of the clan.

- In groups of 3-4, students will be asked to role-play “a day in the life of…” a Wurundjeri-willam family.

- Each group should have a student assigned to the role of the male, female and child/ren of the clan.

- Ask each group to role play the different rituals that the men, women and children of the Wurundjeri-willam clan had to once do.

- Children will be given roughly 5 minutes to rehearse their role play in their groups.

- After each group has performed their act, the class will take guesses on who played the male, female and child of the family, and what activities they were taking part in.

ActivitiesActivity 2: Timeline tableau of the Wurundjeri land from 1800-present

- Start off the lesson by getting students to walk, skip etc around the room – allowing them to develop a sense of space as well as getting them to form different numbered groups before dividing them into 5 groups for the tableau activity. - Once the class is divided into 5 groups, assign each group with a scenario (which the teacher will have typed up onto a piece of paper). Each group will portray what life would have been like from a point in the timeline of the Wurundjeri land. - The scenarios might be: 1800’s when the Wurundjeri people occupied the land, early 1900’s when the site was a bluestone quarry, 1930’s when the site was a rubbish dump, 1980’s during the rehabilitation of the site and the development of CERES, and 2014 (or present) current use of the site as a Community Environment Park.  - The teacher will read one scenario out first while that group performs their 1 minute role play and end it in a tableau (still shot). The teacher continues to read the next four scenarios in the same process from the start of the timeline to the present day.

Activities

Activity 3: Thought tunnel for a sustainable school

- After visiting CERES, the class can discuss the different sustainable actions that could be used to help create a more sustainable world, in a lesson prior to this activity. Key sustainable areas that might be discussed are: core, water, waste, energy and biodiversity.

- In this activity, you might like to invite the school’s principal into the classroom to play the role of the principal who is thinking about converting the school into a sustainable school. However, the principal needs the students’ thoughts on whether they think it will be a good idea. The principal can then leave the room and the role of the principal can then be given to one of the students, who will then walk through the thought tunnel as the other students provide their reasons for why or why shouldn’t the principal convert the school into a sustainable school.