A blog providing ideas and resources for those teachers hoping to teach the new GCSE Specification, first announced in April 2022. Draft subject content released for consultation in June 2026 - for first teaching from 2028 or 2029.
As part of the resources which are being developed in due course to go along with the GCSE Natural History specification, we will be suggesting lists of places to visit as part of the wider work of delivering the new course. It will be important to connect students with these places, whether through school, or by encouraging parents to consider taking their children there for enrichment purposes.
As I teach in Cambridgeshire, this would be one place to consider should my current school decide to offer the new GCSE Natural History specification.
It's right here, in Cambridge, the only real giant ground sloth skeleton on display in the UK. These South American herbivores were among the largest mammals to walk the Earth. We're open this weekend, incl. 12 - 4.30pm Bank Holiday Monday, if you fancy a look 😎@CamUnivMuseumspic.twitter.com/WSMU0OlyIY
— Museum of Zoology, Cambridge (@ZoologyMuseum) August 24, 2022
The Horniman Museum and Gardens might make a useful location for a field visit for those schools who are within easy travelling distance.
We will be collating a list of suggested places for field visits, including museums of this kind. We have a spreadsheet with quite a lot already, but keen to hear your suggestions.
Here's a description of the museum collection, one of which is particularly useful.
Our Natural History collection contains over 250,000 specimens of local, national and worldwide origin.
They were assembled from the mid-19th to the early 21st centuries for public display, education, reference and research.
The collection contains biological and geological material of national and international significance and includes taxidermy, skeletal material, pinned insects, fossils, minerals, rocks, models, dried pressed plants, fungi, shells, and birds’ eggs.
Having recently declared an ecological and climate emergency we increasingly use our collections to connect people with nature and encourage a deeper appreciation, love and respect for the natural world. Our collections and research – combined with the public programmes – help to raise awareness of the global environmental challenges we all face. We seek to empower and encourage people to take action to protect the planet and its ecosystems for future generations.
The Natural History collection can be searched. It is split into Zoology, Geology and Botany.
There is plenty of taxidermy, and also collections of skeletons.
Some of the museum is free to visit, but there is a charge for the Aquarium and Butterfly House, which may be of interest.
Year 10 GCSE artists & photographers visited the Horniman Museum in London on Monday. They carried out drawings and photographs in the butterfly house & aquarium as well as making observations of the vast array of taxidermy on exhibit in the gallery of natural history. #hornimanpic.twitter.com/rPfFRYXjsM
This is a place which should definitely be on a list of places to visit for those who want to explore palaeontology and see a wealth of artefacts from various historical periods. It is next door to the wonderful Pitt Rivers Museum, which is an anthropological treasure house as well, and will have its own post on the blog. If you can get to Oxford, this is well worth a look.
The Palaeontology page is good. They have artefacts from William Buckland and Mary Anning in their collection. The building is dramatic and impressive and based over several floors. The pillars are made from different rock types, which covers geology as well.
The museum also offers a range of learning workshops, including some for GCSE. One can imagine that if the new specification offers a suitable structure for these that the museum might develop something specifically for the GCSE Natural History.
"Gilbert White’s book, more than any other, has shaped our everyday view of the relations between humans and nature."
Richard Mabey, Naturalist & biographer of Gilbert White
Gilbert White's book is a landmark text which students of the GCSE in Natural History are likely to be introduced to in some way. It was a great inspiration for other writers who are at the heart of natural history as well, including Charles Darwin.
Gilbert White was the curate of the Parish of Selborne in Hampshire and lived there for 40 years. He started his work with his Garden Kalendar in 1751. He and his brother cut a path, called the Zigzag, into the hill behind the house where Gilbert lived, leading up onto the Common.
White is widely regarded as the father of ecology, and is a globally significant natural scientist. He was responsible for a number of major discoveries in the world of natural history
White is famous because of his method.
In an age without cameras and tape recorders he correctly identified the willow wrens as separate species by their songs and by minute differences in their plumage. He did this through observation, what he called ‘observing narrowly’, and then carefully recording what he saw.
Whereas other natural historians of the 18th century received information from all over the country, White closely observed nature in one patch of country, as modern natural historians do. He would receive specimens from local boys, or from his brother John, which he would examine. His scientific fame rests on his minute observation of all nature in his garden, on his walks and his rides in the countryside.
Some text amended from the museum website.
Simon Barnes, in The Times 1st June 2013 wrote:
‘The book is about taking small things and understanding their place across the immensities of space and time. He was able to take a small localised matter and see its eternal significance. He saw his little chunk of Hampshire as a single living entity".
The book takes the form of a seriesof letters to Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington, and was published in 1789 near the end of his life.
Gilbert White also referred to the "rude magnificence" of nature.
