In Form 3 (grades 7-8,) a new Natural History assignment appeared on the PNEU programmes. While in Forms 1 and 2 students were simply told to “Keep a nature notebook,” now in Form 3, they were instructed to keep a “Nature Notebook with flower, bird and insect lists, & make daily notes.”
“The Lists” as they were commonly referred to, were described by G. M. Bernau in this way:
The children should also keep a flower list, i.e., a diary of when each flower has been first seen in the year; a tree list, saying when each tree comes into leaf and flower; a bird list, stating when a bird is first seen, etc. (PR 4, p. 605)
Some students also kept lists of mosses, lichens, fossils, animals, and birds’ nesting dates, such as “the dates when the song was first heard, nest building began, eggs were laid and hatched, nestlings took flight.” (Drury, PR 24, p. 188)
Each list item included the common name of the specimen and also the scientific name. Alfred Thornley, an examiner of the House of Education student-teacher nature notebooks, exclaimed in his 1926 yearly report: “The searching out of the scientific names is a good discipline which helps to promote more exact observations, and to systematise them. Let us have scientific names please!” (PR 37, p. 137) Agnes Drury, Natural History teacher for the House of Education, explained further, that the use of Latin names shows the relationship between species where English names cannot. Continue reading