Teaching About Nature and Sustainability
Learning about nature and sustainability and how the choices we all make impact our environment are growing in importance. But teaching about climate change and sustainability for the first time can be daunting. How do you share the information clearly and seriously without scaring the children about the environmental issues we may face in the future?
Busy Things’ activities are a great way to cover the concepts whilst keeping anxiety low and engagement high. All of our activities and games are age-appropriate. And, we use a multitude of gamification techniques to ensure we hold the children’s attention, keep them on-task and importantly help them retain the information for later too.
Our simulator game, Tree World, is a casing point. Based on the very real climate crisis, it challenges pupils to develop a balanced eco-system, where Beeples (humans) and Berbs (animals, birds and plants) can happily co-exist.
If the children keep setting fires and building, they’ll see the disastrous consequences. Plant trees and only build what’s necessary, however, and the planet becomes a whole lot more pleasant.
Planet Buxton
We very recently took part in a teacher event hosted by Planet Buxton. This aimed to share planet-conscious teaching ideas and initiatives with local teachers. In this blog, we share the teaching resources we used at the event, which pull together pre-existing Busy Things activities in a ready-to-go format. We hope you like them!
What’s included?
As part of the Planet Buxton event, we delivered workshops to teachers. We gave an overview of the Busy Things platform and directed teachers towards some activities that were relevant to the age group and subject area of nature and sustainability.
We discussed the benefits that Busy Things’ vast array of activities and teacher tools bring to the classroom. And to show just how easily and speedily a teacher can develop a good quality lesson plan with Busy Things, we created two sample lessons in line with curriculum objectives. Download these below:
Key Stage 1 materials
This Key Stage 1 lesson covers science curriculum objectives for Years 1 and 2 on the topic of Plants.
Including interactive activities, optional outdoor learning opportunities, and plenty of discussion prompts to create an engaging and memorable learning experience. The lesson can be followed in full or adapted to best suit your children and timetable.
The PowerPoint presentation and lesson plan for this can be found here and the supporting resources here.
Key stage 2 materials
This Key Stage 2 lesson covers geography curriculum objectives on the topic of Natural Resources.
Including interactive activities that challenge children to recall prior knowledge, research opportunities, and real-world statistics to prompt discussion and invite children to share opinions on the increasingly important topic of climate change and sustainability. The lesson can be followed in full or adapted to best suit your children and timetable.
The PowerPoint presentation and lesson plan for this can be found here and the supporting resources here.
NOTE: If you attended the Planet Buxton event, use the teacher and pupil logins provided on the day. These will enable you to access Busy Things for 6 weeks. Download the PowerPoint presentation and lesson plan from this page and simply click on the pin within your Busy Things account to gain access to the activities.
If you weren’t at the event, you can still access the same materials. Simply take a free 28-day free trial, and access the games using the Search facility within Busy Things. Download the PowerPoint presentations and lesson plans from the links above to support your teaching.