Lesson Plans

Saturday 20 March 2010

Lesson Plans

Animal Earth Summit

These 3 lessons build towards an exciting “Animal Earth Summit” in which students perform as an animal, which has been asked to share its experience of the impacts of climate change with other animals. These lessons involve:

1. Science: Students research their animal or plant
2. Art: Students design costumes and rehearse their talk
3. Performance

The best talks can then be performed in school events such as assemblies.

Click here to download The Animal Earth Summit lesson plans.

Animal Fact Files

If you would like to stage your own Animal Earth Summit you might find it helpful to find out about some of the different ways in which animals and the plants are being affected by human activities and climate change.

To get you started, information on 10 different species has been summarised in the following fact files on Bees, Butterflies, the Eleonora's Falcon, Olm, Plankton, Polar Bears, the Purple Frog, Seahorses and Staghorn Coral.

It is also worth you thinking about the ecological requirements and behaviour of animals and plants by using the Adaptations to Habitat factsheet.

These factsheets will help you to think about some of the ways in which species differ, such as why they are a certain size and shape, why they live in certain places and how they compete with others in order to survive. They will also help you to think about the ways in which humans might be making life harder for other species.

Message in a Bottle

This competition invites you to send a message in a bottle, which explains why you think the environment is worth protecting to someone important.

You could decorate the inside or outside of your bottle or your letter.

The more effort you put in to your message the more likely it is that the person you send it to will remember what you have said and to do something to help.

Click here to download the Message in a Bottle lesson plan

The Shrinking Island

The purpose of this lesson is to make students think about the possible impacts of sea level rise on island communities by engaging with the issues on a creative and human level.

Students will:
•    Learn that changes in sea level are linked to climate change
•    Understand and apply the use of contour lines on a map
•    Consider the effects of changes in sea levels on people and communities objectives

Click here to download the Shrinking Island lesson plan and map.

Some of the impacts of sea level on islands are worth considering for this class.

The Shrinking Island : Radio Interviews

This lesson plan asks you to imagine that you are making a news report about the island that you have previusly coloured in to show sea level rise.

One of your group should act as the news reporter and the other three as a fisherman, housewife and farmer from the island, which is losing land to the sea.

The goal is to make a news report that can be presented to the class and used to explain how it feels to be on the island as it is shrinking due to sea level rise.

Use the suggestions in this lesson plan and your imagination to come up with ideas about what to say and the questions a reporter might ask.

Click here to download The Shrinking Island : Radio Interviews lesson plan.

Earth Summit Talks

Watch this talk by Ursula Rakova, from the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea, and discuss what you think it would be like to live on an island as is covered by rising sea levels, and how you would feel if you had to evacuate your home and become a refugee. Listen to other talks from the Isles of Scilly Earth Summit here.