Activities and resources for schools
Staff in the University’s School of Education have pulled together resources which schools may find useful in discussing issues around climate change. Staff are also organising a poster competition with a climate change theme for schools and the winners will be announced on Wednesday 20 October 2021. Please note the University is not responsible for the content of external websites.
Welsh Bacc Guidance
The University has produced this document for students undertaking the Welsh Baccalaureate on how they and schools can incorporate climate change into this qualification. Whether they are doing the A level or GCSE version of this qualification, this document is presented in the way which allows students to pick and choose what they think is relevant to their level.
The film 2040
There is a film called 2040 which looks at the solutions to climate change and creates a vision of a better world. You can donate to projects implementing these on the website. The solutions are:
- Solar micro-grids with energy storage in developing countries
- Driverless cars
- Regenerative agriculture
- Seaweed farming – excess pollution in our atmosphere makes the oceans acidic, so this would absorb huge amounts of acid from the ocean and carbon from the atmosphere, grows up to 50cm/day and can produce useful products such as fertiliser, food, animal feed, bioethanol fuel and biodiesel fuel.
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle to reduce consumption
Permaculture taster course
There are 1-day taster courses for people to learn about permaculture, a type of regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture is explained in the solutions page.
Nasa kids’ guide to climate change
This resource contains:
- pdf resource on general information regarding what climate change is suitable for year 5 and above.
- A section on activities you can do to get kids thinking about climate change such as making bees and exploring the impact of climate change on them.
- A big questions page which explores what climate change is and has a short video showing how arctic has changed since 1984.
- An interactive game showing how slight changes in temperature can lead to coral bleaching and other activities involving sea level rises.
- Videos available on “What is climate change?”, the greenhouse effect and how we know the climate is changing.
OXFAM Climate Change Challenge
Primary
Aimed at pupils aged 7-11. Lesson plan about exploring climate change using activities such as Greenhouse effect in a jar activity. You can also download it.
Secondary
Aimed at pupils aged 11-14. Lesson plan about exploring climate change using activities such as Greenhouse effect in a jar activity involving predictions about what will happen. Recapping what they have found from PowerPoint. Producing mind map of what they know at the beginning of the lesson then adding what they’ve learnt at the end.
WWT climate champions
Aimed towards years 5 and 6. Very good resources in terms of understanding prevention of climate change as well as causes with lots of ideas for interactive ideas including indoor and outdoor activities. There is also one for younger children here.
Climate Change Club in a Box
Aimed at years 7-8. Has PowerPoints split up into topics including general info on climate change, energy, impacts, solutions, and net zero emissions, making it easy to pick and choose what topics you want to cover.
Education resource library: earthday.org
Contains lesson plans, activity packs and quizzes for primary and secondary school level, including topics such as:
- Air quality
- Plastic pollution
- Insects
Glasgow Science Centre Ideas Studio
Contains information on different types of solutions and their challenges. Each solution is given subject tags and an age recommendation to indicate what classes they would best be taught in.