Sustainability Resources Coming to Classroom Secrets

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Our Marketing Campaigns Manager, Claire, is keen to find out more so is having a chat with our Sustainability specialist, Hannah, to see what we can expect.

Tell us why Classroom Secrets have decided to create new Sustainability resources? 

Sustainability is rightly in the limelight. We are living in a world where we are now seeing the physical effects of climate change, whether it be extreme weather on the news or loss of biodiversity in our local area, and we know that young people have a lot of questions and concerns. We want to give hope to future generations by providing a range of informative resources that will equip children with the knowledge and practical skills to use both now and in the future.

Tell us what we can expect to see in Classroom Secrets Sustainability?

Our resources have been designed to run alongside the Department for Education’s Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy which states that by 2025 all educational settings will be required to have in place a sustainability lead and a climate action plan. 

We’ve broken the initiative down into the areas we can help with and centred our resources around eight, age-appropriate topics.  At present, we have one sustainability topic per year group but that’s soon to change with the introduction of a second!  

We’ve purposely designed Sustainability to run alongside science, as to us, it’s vital that children have the required knowledge needed to access our chosen themes. So, for example, we know that recycling would be difficult to explore without prior knowledge of materials, so our Year 2 ‘Reusing and Recycling’ topic is closely linked to Year 2 ‘Uses of Everyday Materials’.

So, what do the topics entail?

We wanted to include topics that are relevant to children’s everyday lives; we know as teachers ourselves, that learning is far more meaningful that way.  Our first topics include ‘Animals and Environments, ‘Growing and Sourcing Food’, ‘Reusing and Recycling’ and ‘Waste and Pollution’. Each topic includes five separate lessons, each with their own teaching PowerPoint, practical activities and worksheets, which can be taught over a course of days or weeks.

I know a lot of work has gone into this, what are you most proud of?

The balance we’ve achieved in providing information; yet building an engaging range of activities at the same time. We really wanted to make this scheme as ‘hands-on’ as possible and therefore you’ll see children carrying out activities such as building terrariums, conducting biodiversity surveys and sharing their knowledge with wider communities.

I know some teachers may feel apprehensive about teaching Sustainability – do you have any advice?

Don’t be! Whilst climate change has been happening for a long time, the teaching of the skills and knowledge to deal with climate change is relatively new to schools. So, know that you’re not alone.  Our resources are a fantastic starting point on your school’s sustainability journey, and we really hope they’ll prove useful to you.

Browse sustainability resources here.