Monday, September 24, 2007

Key Club get involved

Saturday's weather confounded the forecasters - a warm dry day enabled the 8 students to tug, drag, throw and heave litter out of the stream corridor at Papatoetoe High School. They admired the local eels turned out of their hidey-holes. There were enough assorted items to furnish a house, from a phone and computer to curtains and wallpaper, toys, concrete and mirrors. After a laughter-filled 3 hours, the group retired with Jelena to barbeque a few well-earned sausages. The photos below capture some of the action.

The hands were willing, but few, and we were glad to welcome Lee Bell from Kiwanis, and Gerard from Papatoetoe High School.


Friday, September 21, 2007

Planting

During this week many of the junior science classes have been planting at the stream. With over 500 plants being planted.

These will be closly monitored over the next couple of months in the way they grow and help keep the weed problem down.

Community Clean Up

On the 22nd September starting at 9:30am, students from Papatoetoe High School, the community and neighbours are invited to help clean up the stream. We look forward to you coming down and helping with the cleanup.

Papatoetoe High School
22 Sepetmber 9:30am

Saturday, September 8, 2007

The stream cleanup continues

Thought you might like to see the biggest catch yet from the stream, during friday's litter picking by 10SI.

During the next couple of weeks the planting of riparian zones will start to happen. This is the planting of shrubs and trees to help remove pollutants from the land, help clean water run off, and also to provide habitats for insects and animal life.

We look forward to posting in the next couple of weeks the planting that the Papatoetoe High School Year 10 Science students have been busily preparing for with the rubbish cleanups.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Professional Development for teachers

Today a group of Science teachers and one ICT teacher from Papatoetoe High School spent the morning down at the stream with the team from Wai-Care. This is part of the programme that has been setup in conjunction between Papatoetoe High School and Wai-Care. The teachers were shown a number of practical experiments that could be carried out with the students during practical science lessons.

We looked at various sites throughout the 300 metre length of the stream that runs along the boundary that could be used as photographic sites to monitor for the next couple of years, one of these sites is where a storm water outfall comes out and meets the stream, today it was clean and clear, but as previous photos on this site show, it can be polluted and cause stress and death for the aquatic life living in the Papatoetoe Stream.

Also shown to the teachers by a wonderful Wai-Care coordinator - Paul, was the amount of aquatic live in the stream, with a number of short finned eels swimming around in the warmth of the sun.

Also put out during the session was a pest monitoring station, we hope not to find any pests have been through it, but with sightings of rats throughout various other sessions at the stream we are not confident that no pests will visit.

We wish to thank Julia, Andrew and Paul for a great professional development session.

Also we wish to thank James Corbett for coming down to the stream on Thursday, he is the Manukau City Council officer who directs the Wai Care programme within Manukau. He is also the Chair of Wai Care's regional Steering Committee.


Paul with the short fin eels.

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Some photos of the experience for the teachers


What Can Wai Care Groups Do 2


From: waiphsproject, 57 seconds ago









What can Wai-care do for groups, with some photos of the stream project

Monday, September 3, 2007

Where is the boundary?

One of the issues that we face at the moment is defining where the boundary is between the stream and the school and neighboring properties. We hope the image supplied by wai-care will help.