What is a weed? 
Display a variety of pictures of flowering plants. 
In groups ask the children to brainstorm the questions: 

• What is a weed?
• In what ways are they different from other plants?

Record their ideas on charts.  Ask children to list on a card one thing they would like to know about weeds.  Cards can then be sorted into topics. (See web.) 
Students can then list some ways in which they may be able to find out more about weeds.

Visit a site where a variety of environmental weeds can be found. Environmental weeds can be found throughout urban and rural environments. (The Molesworth and Hagley Environment Centres are ideal for a visit focused on weeds and will enable students to find answers to some of their questions.) 
The visit will provide an opportunity for students to observe the effects of weeds on a natural environment.  Children can engage in a variety of activities here, including observing and collecting specimens, and identifying and mapping locations of weeds.  

Some ways of collecting and recording information needs to be set up prior to the visit.  Many councils or special working groups have people who can talk to children about the problems of weeds and actions that can be taken. 

 

A variety of follow-up activities across a range of learning areas is suggested at this stage.  These might include: 

• collecting and identifying weeds from the local environment;
• designing and making a weed identification chart;
• writing cinquain poems about flowers or weeds;
• marking on a map areas endangered by environmental weeds;
• finding and recording all the available statistics on weeds;
• finding, reading about, and then writing their own articles about weed problems in their environment;
• completing suggested activities from Land and Water
  Study booklet;
• mapping weeds in the school grounds.
  
  

Children could engage in some individual or group research at this stage.  This might include: 

• writing to Landcare groups, councils and the environment centres for information on weeds;
• visiting libraries to research from books, CD ROMS,
  picture sets etc;
• revisiting their list of questions to see if they obtained answers;
• selecting an area of interest and formulating their own
  project on environmental weeds;
• preparing a talk on the effects of environmental weeds
  on the environment;
• writing and performing a song, poem or play on looking
  after the environment;
• considering what actions they may be able to take to
  help lessen the weed problem;
• forming an action plan for looking after a known area

In order to assist students to draw some conclusions about the work covered you might: 

• ask each pair of students to select one of the original questions for which they can provide an answer;
• create a big book on environmental weeds and share it with
  a junior class;
• ask the students to construct a "Futures Wheel" starting
  with a central cause, eg More Weeds, then radiating out,
  showing direct and indirect consequences;
• arrange a six-hat thinking exercise on the weed problem;
  
• return to The Story of Rosy Dock and consider the
  following questions:

What are some other ways in which the woman could have made her place special without planting the rosy dock?
How might these have been shown using collages?  Create a collage showing how a place you care about is affected by people's actions.  These may be positive or negative impacts. 
What are some alternative plots?

 

At this stage students should be given opportunities to act upon what they have learnt.  This might involve: 

• making an information brochure for distribution to the
  school community on the importance of dealing with environmental weeds; 
• designing and making posters encouraging people to
  take care of the environment; 
• becoming involved in a weed eradication project in the
  school or local community; 
• writing to local councils about areas of concern in the
  local environment; 
• adopting an area of the local environment to protect for
  future generations.