A blog providing ideas and resources for those teachers hoping to / preparing to teach the new GCSE Specification, first announced in April 2022, for potential first teaching from 2027, depending on a number of factors.
What is your local river? Can you get out to it to do fieldwork easily?
What fieldwork would be appropriate for the GCSE Natural History?
One river that I have completed fieldwork on most recently is the River Glaven.
This is a fairly short river which flows through North Norfolk.
Rising from tiny chalk headwaters in lower Bodham and Baconsthorpe, the River Glaven flows for approximately 17 km. Its main course begins just below Selbrigg Pond, where three tributaries combine at the outfall. From there, the river winds through wooded hills of glacial debris, traverses lush countryside, and meanders through picturesque flint villages, before meeting the sea behind Blakeney Point.
Image: Selbrigg Pond, where the Glaven comes to life.
I have followed the river for most of that route.
At Letheringsett mill there is a useful stretch where fieldwork can be carried out.
Image: Letheringsett
The River Glaven faces challenges from abstraction, climate change and development. These pressures affect water levels and temperatures, ultimately impacting the wildlife and communities that depend on this precious chalk stream.
As we move to the next stage of the development of the new GCSE Natural History, there will be a need for teachers to receive CPD in a wide range of new skills and knowledge. This sort of event will be particularly helpful.
How do we protect nature in a rapidly changing world?
Join us on Tuesday 17 March to hear leading conservation scientists and researchers discuss how we can safeguard biodiversity for the future.
Professor Nathalie Seddon – Professor of Biodiversity (University of Oxford)
Dr Liana Chua – Social anthropologist and Associate Professor in Malay World Studies (University of Cambridge)
Dr Joshua Elves-Powell – Associate Lecturer in Biodiversity Conservation and Ecology (UCL) and National Geographic Explorer
Chaired by Martine Croxall (BBC News)
Be part of an important conversation on conservation, climate and the future of our natural world.
One possible additional focus for teachers is to mention or highlight some of the specific days during the year which are linked to specific species of wildlife.
A NEW educational hub dedicated to championing the cause of nature has opened at a tourist attraction in Cornwall.
The Centre for Nature Futures at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, near Mevagissey, was launched in front of an invited audience of educationalists and business people.
Speeches were given by Heligan co-founder Sir Tim Smit, Heligan chief executive David Harland, head of Nature Futures Dan Ryan and Mary Colwell, a conservationist and naturalist who has led a campaign to introduce a natural history GCSE to the national curriculum.
When the specification is (finally) released, along with SAMs and other support materials and guidance there will be a year or so to prepare teachers to teach the new specification.
This will require them to upskill themselves (and I include myself in that).
Official and 'unofficial' support and textbooks and other material will start to appear, and the various organisations who have been involved so far will no doubt have their own idea.
There are already some organisations offering free online training - here are a few examples from November 2023 for example, from different organisations... they will of course be offering many more in the years to come...
On 16th Nov at 1:45pm, tune into our next STEM Live lesson, 'How to Classify a Sea Monster', brought to you by @LinneanSociety.
Here you'll learn how to study life in the wild, name living organisms and even draw imaginary creatures!
— Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (@RGS_IBG) October 26, 2023
What do you think will be the most useful types of support that teachers and schools that decide to offer the new specification will need to be provided with - whether by the awarding body or external bodies including publishers, subject associations, charities etc.
Horizon was Barry Lopez' penultimate book, and a substantial piece of work which showed his particular love of the world, and his way of describing it.
MacFarlane met Barry a number of times, and has written about this, and there are videos available on YouTube of them discussing Barry's life and work.
Horizon remains one of the finest descriptions of the slow change that has taken place within the life times of those of us over the age of 50. Communicating the likely changes that will take place in the next 50 years while remaining positive is the difficult thing...
Make sure that you take part in this huge citizen science event. Just give up an hour of your weekend to sit there with a cup of tea and see which birds land in your garden.
At the time of posting around 400 000 people / families have registered to take part.
The subtitle of the book is 'A Human History of the Sahara' and the author has personal experience of living in the region, whose name comes from some local terms.
It's one of the best books I read last year.
The indigenous populations would never use the term 'Sahara', as they refer to smaller sub-regions with which they are familiar. They will generally have quite specialist knowledge of particular areas and the routes between trading posts.
They used words that described the empty, dangerous, inhospitable nature of the region, some of which were then appropriated for the actual place names for desert areas
There is also plenty of insight. Jay Owens' book 'Dust' has previously explored the many geographical aspects that can be obtained from exploring the desert sands.
A large part of the desert is made of hamada or desert pavement, or stony ground, and sand dunes are relatively rare.
The Natural History of deserts will not be a main area of the GCSE Natural History, which will focus particularly on UK based ecosystems and nature, but the way that nature can survive and people can thrive in such challenging environments is worth exploring.
The other aspect of the book is that the desert hasn't always been a desert - it used to be woodland, but climate change resulted in a change in the landscape of the whole region.
This book has been really fascinating and increased my knowledge of deserts a great deal. It is the additional human context which has made all the difference, and the way that it is put together is authentic and authoritative.
There is plenty on the desert as it is today, and its challenges.
My copy was published by Profile Books in 2025.
Hardback, 374pp
ISBN: 987-1-788166454
An audiobook preview is here. Those with Spotify Premium can listen to the book too.
This area is one where once again indigenous knowledge is coming to the fore.
A framework for nature I came across via a map activity shared by Bob Lang.
It's an evidence-based guideline for how to integrate nature into cities so people actually benefit from trees and green spaces.
The rule of thumb provides clear criteria for the minimum provision of urban trees in our urban communities by setting the following three minimum requirements:
3 mature trees from every home
30 percent tree canopy cover in every neighbourhood
300 metres from the nearest high-quality public park or other green space
Simple. Measurable. Backed by research showing that proximity to nature reduces stress, improves mood, and has genuine health benefits.
How does your neighbourhood score on this measure?
I can see a great many more than 3 mature trees frm my home and am less than 100 metres from green spaces.
Not sure of the overall tree canopy cover, but it's fairly high...
Image: Holkham Meals - Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license.
Wendling Beck is in Norfolk - my home county. It has undergone some regeneration recently. This video explores this idea of regenerating riparian environments.
There was a consultation before the long hiatus in the development of the GCSE Specification which will need to be approved by OFQUAL and go to consultation again.
These were some of the responses to the questionnaire back then...
I wonder whether these have changed in the intervening years...
Catherine: the Princess of Wales has shared the 4th in a series of videos as part of her personal journey with cancer, and sharing the power of Nature.
After a life spent travelling the globe, the world’s most famous naturalist turns his attention closer to home to explore the wildlife of England’s iconic capital. Having lived in London for 75 years, Sir David has an intimate knowledge of the city’s natural history, and there's no better guide to introduce us to its most spectacular wildlife secrets.
London is considered the greenest major city in the world, with a surprising variety of animal dramas playing out in the most unexpected places. Whether it’s herds of deer invading gardens, pigeons commuting by tube, snakes slithering along Regent's Canal, parakeets raiding green spaces, or seagulls learning new ways to make a killing in the city, Sir David reveals the incredible wild encounters to be experienced across his hometown.
Sir David celebrates the extraordinary ways in which animals are adapting to survive in the urban jungle, whether it be the fortunes of a pair of peregrines nesting on the Houses of Parliament as their chicks attempt their first flight, or a family of foxes living in the heart of Tottenham struggling to get to grips with fierce rivals and dangerous streets. He is inspired as he learns how people across the capital are ensuring some of Britain’s most-loved species can continue to call London home, and he even joins efforts to bring back animals that have disappeared from the city.
Captured over his centennial year, this personal and poignant film is a timely insight into how cities can become homes for wildlife as well as ourselves.
“I think of two landscapes- one outside the self, the other within.
The external landscape is the one we see-not only the line and color of the land and its shading at different times of the day, but also its plants and animals in season, its weather, its geology… If you walk up, say, a dry arroyo in the Sonoran Desert you will feel a mounding and rolling of sand and silt beneath your foot that is distinctive. You will anticipate the crumbling of the sedimentary earth in the arroyo bank as your hand reaches out, and in that tangible evidence you will sense the history of water in the region. Perhaps a black-throated sparrow lands in a paloverde bush… the smell of the creosote bush….all elements of the land, and what I mean by “the landscape.”
The second landscape I think of is an interior one, a kind of projection within a person of a part of the exterior landscape. Relationships in the exterior landscape include those that are named and discernible, such as the nitrogen cycle, or a vertical sequence of Ordovician limestone, and others that are uncodified or ineffable, such as winter light falling on a particular kind of granite, or the effect of humidity on the frequency of a blackpoll warbler’s burst of song….the shape and character of these relationships in a person’s thinking, I believe, are deeply influenced by where on this earth one goes, what one touches, the patterns one observes in nature- the intricate history of one’s life in the land, even a life in the city, where wind, the chirp of birds, the line of a falling leaf, are known. These thoughts are arranged, further, according to the thread of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual development. The interior landscape responds to the character and subtlety of an exterior landscape; the shape of the individual mind is affected by land as it is by genes."
Lovely to see Sharon Witt and Helen Clarke bringing NAEE's Year of Environmental Lunacy blog project to a close with their suggestion of the Murmuring Moon for December.
Those teaching in or near to Somerset gained another possible option for field visits following the 2023 announcement that Mendip became a National Nature Reserve.
Home to a vibrant landscape and nationally endangered species such as horseshoe #bats, this 1,400 hectare #NNR will boost #NatureRecovery whilst connecting people to nature.
