If students are to develop a deep and authentic understanding of the knowledge, values and practices of sustainability then they must begin by making an emotional reconnection with nature.
Storythread is a ‘pedagogy of place’ that connects students to nature.
Through the Pullenvale Environmental Education Centre (PEEC) Storythreads, students and teachers are both audience and participants in stories about characters - real and fictional – living in harmony and in conflict with their environment and the natural world.
The characters’ choices and dilemmas they face, their knowledge and actions, their motivations and interests, and the impact of their choices and actions, are played out for the students and teachers to appreciate in real places.
Students observe, inquire, investigate, predict, influence, and subsequently reflect upon their own lives and experiences in order to shape future knowledge, attitudes, values and actions.
Every PEEC Storythread Program uses the four chapter inquiry framework.
Chapter One
Students make an authentic and purposeful connection with their local environment and the curriculum, then engage with the PEEC story and begin to think deeply about the values and ideas embedded within it.
Chapter Two
Students connect to fictional people and places by stepping into the story and helping solve an environmental problem.
Chapter Three
Students make links between the story and this own lives by reflecting on their experiences and then communicating personal insights and understandings.
Chapter Four
Students respond to the story as active citizens by finding ways to make life better in their place.