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Sustainable schools – learn

Resources for teaching students inside and outside the classroom and training staff to teach climate change confidently

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Climate Change

Talking to Children About Climate Change

  • Guide for talking to children about climate change and making sure you are being age appropriate for this emotive topic.
  • Imagine the Future: this film helps people to think what a low carbon future could be like and inspires people to work towards this positive vision:

Understanding Eco-Anxiety

Interesting and inspirational activist 21 year old Clover Hogan

Teaching Resources for Primary

  • Good books for primary-age children include:
    • Little Book for BIG Changes by Kirsten Liepmann, Karen Ng, and illustrated by Mona Karaivanova
    • All books in the Wild Tribe Heroes series
  • The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 goals designed to support human development without destroying the planet. This video explains the goals and there is a wealth of great teaching activities related to each of the goals.
  • Transform Our World have a range of useful teacher-related resources from individual lesson plans and assemblies, to full-scale year-long programmes, on a range of sustainability and environment-based topics. Age group is specified.
  • Transform Our World have a resource to help you get started with the SDGs
  • Damian Gameau’s film, 2040 presents a very positive vision of a low carbon future and is a great stimulus for work on understanding climate change and how to address it. The 2040 Education Portal provides schools and educators with a comprehensive package of free curriculum-aligned educational resources and explains how to run a 2040 film screening in your school.
  • Earthcubs – a new set of resources to inspire 3 -11 year olds about sustainability and the world around them.

Teaching Resources for Secondary

  • 39 Ways to Save the Planet, 14 min podcasts (BBC Radio 4) . Positive ways for tackling Climate Change and Diversity Loss, also demonstrating many innovations to inspire pupils today into working on these challenges with their IT and STEM skills development in a few years time. Suitable for 15+
  • The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are a set of 17 goals designed to support human development without destroying the planet. This video explains the goals and there is a wealth of great teaching activities related to each of the goals.
  • Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Simple Explanation of Climate Change video. Useful for students who still need convincing that climate change is a problem that is caused by human activity
  • Transform Our World have a range of useful teacher-related resources from individual lesson plans and assemblies, to full-scale year-long programmes, on a range of sustainability and environment-based topics. Age group is specified.
  • NASA Climate Kids– a website designed for children to explore and learn about climate change
  • Paul Turner, Head of Geography at Bedales School in Hampshire, has compiled a variety of resources in order to equip teachers to teach the climate emergency. Including material to read, videos to watch & content to teach
  • Science Museum – Carbon Cycle Caper: Resources include notes for teachers, questions, process cards and a presentation. Students “play out” the carbon cycle, understand how it has affected our use of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution and its impacts on the climate
  • Science Museum – Climate report: Resources include notes for teachers and templates for cubes, which the students make. Cubes cover three areas – Australia, Russia and Costa Rica – in 2011 and what could happen in 2051. Students will learn the difference between weather and climate, appreciate the diversity of climate types around the world, and its impact, and predictions of what could happen in the next 40 years
  • Climate breakdown – 14 lessons aimed at Year 10 with supporting videos created by “geography-paul” Paul Turner. Head of Geography at Bedales School in Hampshire
  • UNESCO provides multimedia educational resources for secondary schools including ideas for classroom activities under the topic of ‘climate action’. Also provide a digital library course for secondary school teachers
  • Damian Gameau’s film, 2040 presents a very positive vision of a low carbon future and is a great stimulus for work on understanding climate change and how to address it. The 2040 Education Portal provides schools and educators with a comprehensive package of free curriculum-aligned educational resources and explains how to run a 2040 film screening in your school.

St Dominics children on food waste

Beaumont School SustFest 2019

Energy Saving

  • The Pod– interactive sustainability website with resources such as the ‘Switch On to Switching Off lesson plan’

Reducing meat consumption

Creating Space for Wildlife

  • Boost tree planting with help from the Woodland Trust.

2015 Green Schools Training Day

Flyers for families

Sustainable School Eco Posters

Don’t forget, the eco topic posters on our main schools page are a great thing to send home to families for discussions in the home.

Oakwood Flyers

Oakwood Primary School, St Albans put together 11 excellent flyers that they sent to their wider school community of parents and carers every day for 2 weeks. Right click and Open in new window to see a bigger version of your chosen image.

Teacher and Staff Training

  • edX– Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact
  • How Bad are Bananas? The producers of the game also provide guidance on how to play it through their “Carbon Academy” and they run broader Carbon Literacy Courses for teachers via zoom at a cost of £150 for two half days.  The courses are accredited by the Carbon Literacy Trust.
  • Climate Conversations: Run a conversation within a group of staff colleagues, after school, either as a two hour session or two one hour sessions. If you want to talk about climate with your colleagues, but aren’t sure how, here are some ready-made materials to help you.