Teachers' kit - a guide to the rainforests of NSW

This new teacher's kit includes:

• Under the Canopy - a guide to the rainforests of NSW (information booklet)
• student worksheets for stages 1, 2 and 3
• a rainforest model for students to colour and build
• excursion outlines and supporting material (teacher's notes, student fact sheets, student work sheets) for various sites in NSW.

This teacher's kit has been prepared to help you teach about the important values of rainforests in NSW. Students will learn about rainforest types, structure, energy and nutrient cycles and food chains. Further fact sheets cover the importance of rainforests, the human impact upon them and managing for risk.

This unit expands upon the HSIE sample unit 'Global Environments - Rainforests' from the HSIE syllabus support document and encourages local field studies of rainforests.

The teacher's kit was developed by NPWS Discovery for Schools staff in the north coast region to support schools participating in the Discovery for Schools excursion program.

Links to national park rainforest excursion information

• Dorrigo Rainforest Centre - Dorrigo National Park
• Sea Acres Rainforest Centre - Sea Acres National Park
• Iluka Nature Reserve
• Minnamurra Rainforest - Budderoo National Park

Documents to download

• Under the Canopy - a guide to the rainforests of NSW, a 30 page full colour PDF (4.5MB) is available for broadband users to download on the right of this page.
• Under the Canopy  is also available in two parts: part 1 pages 1-13 (PDF 2.1MB) and part 2 pages 14-28 (PDF 2.7MB) for on-line viewing/dial-up users.
• Build a Rainforest A3 (PDF 322KB) and Build a Rainforest A4 (PDF 766KB) cut-out templates.
• NSW Rainforest worksheets (PDF 1MB) for stages 1, 2 and 3

Fact sheets

Suitable for stage 1:

Suitable for stages 2 - 3:

Suitable for stages 4 - 6:

Page last updated: 11 July 2011