Educational and methodological manual for teachers «Wetlands in the time of climate change: a methodological guide for conducting eco-trainings»

With­in the frame­work of the project «Con­struct­ing bird sanc­tu­ar­ies to devel­op pro­tect­ed wet­lands areas in Zakarpat­tia» we cov­er the edu­ca­tion­al com­po­nent, in par­tic­u­lar, that’s why we devel­oped and pub­lished an illus­trat­ed edu­ca­tion­al and method­olog­i­cal man­u­al for teach­ers «Wet­lands in the time of cli­mate change: a method­olog­i­cal guide for con­duct­ing eco-train­ings».

The authors are – Oksana Stankevych-Volosianchuk, a can­di­date of bio­log­i­cal sci­ences, and Katery­na Stankevych-Koval, an expert in ecope­d­a­gogy of the NGO «Ekos­phere».

This man­u­al was devel­oped to imple­ment a short edu­ca­tion­al course on wet­land ecosys­tems and cli­mate change in schools and out­side schools. It focus­es on three inter­con­nect­ed top­ics: cli­mate change, its caus­es and con­se­quences; eco­log­i­cal func­tions of wet­lands; the bio­di­ver­si­ty of wet­land ecosys­tems.

The pub­li­ca­tion con­tains mate­ri­als on train­ing method­ol­o­gy and les­son plans to sup­port teach­ers in their work. In addi­tion, it also pro­vides the the­o­ret­i­cal infor­ma­tion nec­es­sary for under­stand­ing the issues cov­ered, as well as prac­ti­cal activ­i­ties for each les­son: inter­ac­tive exer­cis­es, dis­cus­sions, brain­storm­ing ses­sions, work in small groups, mod­el­ing of prob­lem sit­u­a­tions, sim­ple exper­i­ments, quest tasks and games.

Top­ics cov­ered in the guide will help chil­dren gain new impor­tant knowl­edge, while com­plet­ing the prac­ti­cal activ­i­ties will help them under­stand the prob­lems of cli­mate change and real­ize their own role in solv­ing them.

The pub­li­ca­tion is rec­om­mend­ed for teach­ers of nat­ur­al sci­ences, lead­ers of extracur­ric­u­lar clubs and eco-clubs, pub­lic activists. The pro­vid­ed mate­ri­als can be used dur­ing the teach­ing of biol­o­gy, geog­ra­phy, ecol­o­gy, as well as in extracur­ric­u­lar envi­ron­men­tal activ­i­ties.

The man­u­al was pub­lished with­in the frame­work of the project «Con­struct­ing bird sanc­tu­ar­ies to devel­op pro­tect­ed wet­lands areas in Zakarpat­tia».

This project is sup­port­ed by the IKI Small Grants pro­gramme strength­en­ing local solu­tions for effec­tive cli­mate and bio­di­ver­si­ty action. IKI Small Grants is fund­ed by the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty (BMUKN) and is run by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH. It is part of Germany’s Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).