All of you must have visited the Guindy National Park one of the best National Parks in India. TERI (The Energy and Resource Institute) organised a nature walk inside the park on Feb. 15, 2010 for middle school students. Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya, St. John’s, PSBB, Church Park, Alpha Matriculation, Maharishi Vidyalaya, Valliammal Matriculation, and CSI Jessie Moses were the schools which took their students on this tour.
Pavithra and Muralidharan from TERI briefed the students about this program \’Climate EduXchange Project\’. Each student had to answer a pre-assessment questionnaire which contained questions about national parks, endangered animals, etc.
Then the students went around the Guindy Park for 45 minutes, observe everything and note it down in an observation sheet that was provided to them. Students were also requested to make drawings of the different textures of tree barks that they saw and collect leaves and seeds. Some students also stuck dry leaves of different shapes on their observation sheets.
It was interesting to go around this park which is the only national park situated inside a city. The students could see many things such as common langur, painted stork, sambar deer, porcupine, otter, etc. We had to note down the name, habitat, type of branching, seeds, fruits, eating habits, and many more information in the observation sheets.
The students were excitedly running about trying to fill in as much information as possible. But many of us were unable to fill any thing in the ‘fungi and algae’ column.
Then came a quiz! Each school formed a separate team, so there were 8 teams. The questions were very difficult, but we learnt a lot. Some of the questions were about lithoral forests which are found in the Sunderbans, \’Hanguri\’ which is a type of red endangered deer, Kaziranga National Park, etc. Another new piece of information for us was that Firozabad is called ‘The Glass City of India’. At the end of the quiz St. John’s emerged as the winner, followed by Church Park, while there was a tie between four schools for the third position!
The students were then provided with lunch. They had a hearty meal and returned to their school inspired to save nature and spread the message around.