I am a teacher at North Adelaide Primary School. In the school holidays my friends and I travelled to Malaysian Borneo and were privileged to observe up close many orangutans in rehabilitation centres. I soon became passionate about orangutans and their plight. Now I have a class of 24 Year One students who have become just as taken with orangutans as I am! At present our complete classroom program revolves around orangutans. The Adelaide Zoo orangutans have also provided a great stimulus for our learning. Kluet’s broken arm has been of great interest to the children since a child in my class was also unfortunate enough to break her arm in the playground. Following this was the excitement of Karter’s great escape!

We began by creating a rainforest in our classroom and now we have primates “swinging” everywhere! We reused plastic take-away containers to make mini rainforest environments. After creating the appropriate habitat we began searching the library for books on primates and viewing video footage of orangutans on the internet. The Librarian helped us make an electronic book based on the story “Little Tang”. The children made a beautiful mural of orangutans in a rainforest with the Art teacher (to enter in the AOP competition).

We have a toy orangutan (backpack) called Pongo. The special class helper of the day takes Pongo out to play at recess and lunch (to teach it how to climb). Sometimes Pongo helps us water our vegetable garden or watches us work on the computer. Pongo has even more fun when he goes home on weekends with a child in the class. All in all, Pongo has a more interesting social life than the teacher!

We invited a guest speaker from AOP talk to us about the impact of palm oil plantations and the illegal pet trade.
Together the children and I have written letters to politicians and food companies about the labelling of products containing palm oil and the issues of deforestation. Some quotes from 6 year old children were included in the letters. The children’s quotes were simple yet to the point.

“There are only 10 trees left in some rainforests so please stop cutting down trees to plant palm oil trees”.

“Please do not cut down any more trees and do not kill the mum of baby orangutans and do not sell the baby orangutan for a pet”.

“Dear government, please stop chopping down trees. If you do not, the orangutans will be extinct, so please stop cutting down the rainforests”.

“Stop cutting down the rainforest because we all love orangutans. Please save the orangutans”.

“Goodbye me. Save me. Do not cut down the rainforest or in ten years orangutans will be extinct”.

“Trees give us oxygen. Please stop cutting them down”.

“When you cut down rainforest the baby orangutans get scared and they loose their mother. Then they don’t know how to grow up like a real orangutan”.

“Maybe you can grow the palm oil trees somewhere where the orangutans don’t live”.

“Please government, can you tell the shopkeepers to write down if there’s palm oil or not in the
things they sell”.

“Please stop cutting down the rainforest because the the orangutan will be extinct in ten years and maybe if you stop cutting down the trees then the orangutans won’t be extinct”.

The children have become very proactive in raising money for orangutan conservation and rehabilitation projects. Each morning before school they sell AOP merchandise to the school community. So far they have sold over $3,000 of merchandise! Other activities to raise money include a raffle (prizes are 3 soft toy orangutans), having a day where we dress in orange and face and hand painting orangutan style!

Soon we will be hosting a school assembly where we sing, tell jokes and share information about orangutans. Daily the children bring in stories, poems, drawings and books about orangutans.
It has been a very successful learning topic while at the same time raising awareness of the plight of the orangutans as an endangered species and how children can take action to help.