Melbourne Water Frog Census

www.melbournewater.com.au/frogs

 

Suggestions From Other Teachers

Frog Census in Schools

If you have any suggestions on how to adapt these activities for different year levels or audiences please submit them by providing feedback online.

Activity Teaching Suggestions
The Frog Bog Story

The Frog Census increases community awareness about the health of their local rivers, creeks and wetlands. This activity is designed to raise student's awareness about the impact that humans have on their local rivers, creeks and wetlands and how these activities effect the frog populations living in these areas.

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'Is it a bird?' 'Is it a plane?'….. It's a…….FROG

Frogs can be very difficult to find. They are usually highly camouflaged, blending into their environment. It's often easier to hear frogs than to see them.

Frogs have many different sounding calls depending on the species. Before you start the Frog Census it is important to recognise the structure of a frog call. In this activity students will listen to various sounds to determine what is frog and what is not a frog call.

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Understanding frog calls

How do we find a frog? The answer is easy once we know why and when frogs call! In this activity students will focus on frog biology and frog life cycles to discover when, why and where frogs call.

Frogs especially call during the breeding season. The breeding season varies depending on the frog species and on local weather conditions.

  • The students required some free time to become accustomed to navigating the websites involved

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Recording frog calls

Once you have located where and when frogs are calling, the next step is to survey frogs by recording their call and filling out a data sheet. In this activity students learn recording techniques to collect good quality frog census data.

Where is that frog?:

The closer you can get to a calling frog, the better quality the recording. In this activity students learn how to locate a frog call using triangulation.

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Surveying frogs in your frog bog/local area

In this activity your students will take recordings of the frogs in their local area to send into the Melbourne Water Frog Census.

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What made that sound?

In this activity students learn how to identify the frogs they have recorded as part of the Frog Census.

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Mapping Frogs

The information from the frog census is collated to form an overall picture of the distribution of various frog species around Melbourne. In this activity students map the frogs in their local area.

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If you have any suggestions on how to adapt these activities for different year levels or audiences please submit them by providing via feedback online.