#498: New from Bloomsbury - 100 Ideas series - "Greener School"

New out from Bloomsbury for September and looks to be useful...

I have a copy on order....

100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Greener School is the guide that schools need to implement and achieve their Climate Action Plans. Linking with the DfE Sustainability Climate Change Strategy, as well as the Eco-Schools' top ten topics and the Let's Go Zero Objectives, this is the essential book for creative activities that schools can use throughout the year to empower children and support teaching and learning of sustainability topics.

This book will equip primary teachers with practical ideas and knowledge of resources across a range of environmental topics, including litter, marine life, biodiversity, energy, school grounds and transport. It will cover how schools can reduce their waste, save money and even make money through practical campaigns!

With a foreword from Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE.

Update

Just arrived... will post a better review but this looks excellent with plenty of quick ideas to action.

#497: Photosynthesis

A recent Google Doodle tackled the topic of photosynthesis.

This Back to School Doodle celebrates photosynthesis, the process in which plants use light energy to transform carbon dioxide and water into organic molecules like glucose. Oxygen is then released as a byproduct. This natural phenomenon is essential in supporting life on Earth, allowing many living organisms to breathe. Searches for photosynthesis spike every year during back to school time.

#496: Feral Atlas

The Feral Atlas was a tipoff from Emily Hayes.

From the site's description:

Feral Atlas invites you to explore the ecological worlds created when nonhuman entities become tangled up with human infrastructure projects. Seventy-nine field reports from scientists, humanists, and artists show you how to recognize “feral” ecologies, that is, ecologies that have been encouraged by human-built infrastructures, but which have developed and spread beyond human control. These infrastructural effects, Feral Atlas argues, are the Anthropocene.

Playful, political, and insistently attuned to more-than-human histories, Feral Atlas does more than catalog sites of imperial and industrial ruin. Stretching conventional notions of maps and mapping, it draws on the relational potential of the digital to offer new ways of analyzing—and apprehending—the Anthropocene; while acknowledging danger, it demonstrates how in situ observation and transdisciplinary collaboration can cultivate vital forms of recognition and response to the urgent environmental challenges of our times.

#495: Monty Don on the Power of Nature

A 5x15 conversation with Monty Don. 

#494: Tautonyms

Check out the Triple Tautonyms website to help practise your latin naming of flora and fauna.

#493: Nature Cure

A Guardian article from late 2023 had a piece on what it called the 'nature cure'.

A lot has been made of the health benefits of being outside in nature rather than inside staring at a screen. This is supposed to 'save the NHS' hundreds of thousands of pounds every year by reducing stress.

Nature connectedness will be a major element of the new specification I would hope.

#492: Climate Change in the Curriculum

The Geographical Association has worked with the Council for Subject Associations, UCL’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability Education, and other partners, to develop the following statement that highlights geography’s distinctive contribution to climate change and sustainability education in the publication, 

The key contributions of subjects to climate change and nature education: a curriculum policy proposal.

‘Geography is a curriculum heartland for climate education, sustainability and green skills from Early Years to A level. Its distinctive approach focuses on the interactions and interdependencies between people and their environment and develops the skills young people will need in order to understand, adapt to and mitigate against a changing climate. Geographical fieldwork also provides them with first-hand experiences of nature and landscapes. In this way, geography enables young people to better understand how and why our climate is changing, how this will impact and transform our economy, society and environment – locally, nationally and globally – and what can be done about it.’

Download the statement from UCL.

Reference

Kitson, A., Phillips, M. & Dillon, J. (2025). The key contributions of subjects to climate change and nature education: a curriculum policy proposal. 

Available from September 2025 at www.climateeducation.org.uk

What part will the GCSE Natural History potentially play in this area of the curriculum? One would hope it would have sustainability and climate change at its heart.

#491: Ancient Woodlands

In Britain, an ancient woodland is defined as:

"an area of woodland that, through documentary, archaeological or botanical evidence, can be shown to have been in existence before 1600."

This was a time before the widespread planting of trees began. The pervasiveness of planting makes it less likely to be sure that the wood predated 1600. 

Few of these ancient woodlands will date back to the original wildwood: the arboreal canopy that flourished as the glaciers withdrew from the country.

Are there any near where you live?

Image: Wistman's Wood - ancient woodland in Dartmoor - Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license.