The Curriculum and Assessment Review will report in Autumn 2025. As the following experience demonstrates, sufficient curriculum time for education for sustainability must be a priority.
Following the PGCE GREEN conference in January 2025, Abby Stock-Duerdoth (Science PGCE, 2024-25) had the opportunity to teach a year 8 lesson about climate change and the planet in a comprehensive high school in Trafford. She incorporated RoundView (https://www.roundview.org/) resources, adapting them to the one-off 50-minute lesson. This may have been their first use in a secondary school. Abby’s brief report outlines the lesson activities, highlighting what worked well and what could be improved upon.
The slides used in the lesson can be found here Our Planet: RoundView in the Classroom
Lesson Aims:
By the end of the lesson, my intention was that students should…
- Be aware of the key cycles our planet relies upon
- Appreciate that the earth has finite resources
- Link the climate to human actions, in terms of problems and solutions
Starter: approx. 10 mins, including students arriving from previous lessons and getting settled.
Students answered on scrap paper. Questions are in the same format as the schools standard ‘ready to learn activities’. Interestingly, students found using the back page of an old worksheet confusing. I’d recommend doing this because it gets them thinking about sustainability straight away.
Activity 1: Complete the RoundView jigsaw approx. 15 mins
Students worked in groups of 5 to complete the jigsaw.
It’s important for the teacher to circulate during this and encourage relevant conversations. Students enjoyed this activity and it got them thinking. In other contexts, learners are usually given part of the jigsaw before being given the ‘frame’. However, I gave them the whole jigsaw straight away to save time and ensure all students experienced success. They found this sufficiently challenging. It took longer to complete the jigsaw than expected, and we had a class discussion after about the cycles which I felt was important to give sufficient time to.
Teacher talk: Explaining the causes of environmental damage. approx 5 mins . This section posed a critical question at the heart of the RoundView, and a puzzle about the root causes.
I give students 10 seconds of thinking time and a 20 second turn and talk on each slide to identify examples of the causes. The use of pictures as puzzles in this way kept students engaged – they were working out the answers themselves, but this approach also kept up the pace of the lesson.
Activity 2: What are the solutions? approx. 10 mins
I next gave students this worksheet, asking them, in their teams, to think about what the solutions might be to the three main issues. I gave an example but students struggled with this activity. The pace of the lesson had to be quite fast and they probably didn’t get enough time to properly think it through. Both the students and myself found the precise wording of the ‘answers’ arbitrary.
Activity 3: Categorise the solutions approx. 10 mins
I next introduced students to the idea that all environmental solutions needed to also support human health and happiness.
Finally I gave each group a selection of different actions and asked them to sort them:
- Do the actions contribute to the problem or the solution?
- Which problem or solution do they link to?
Next time, I will give them only solutions and ask them to identify which category they fall into. I think this will reduce cognitive load and ensure the lesson ends on a positive note
Plenary:
I planned to give students each a post-it note and ask them to write down one thing they could do at home, or that the school could do, but this had been a very full lesson and there was no time for this.
Evaluation:
What went well
- Students were genuinely engaged and excited.
- The lesson was a break from their norm which really helped.
- The tactile aspect of the jigsaw was particularly appealing to them.
- Working in groups stimulated some great discussions
- The session allowed students to bring their own expertise and prior knowledge into the classroom
- Starting with the question of if the earth’s has increased, decreased or stayed the same since its formation was a really good way to get engagement early on. I used this question as a ‘hook’ throughout the lesson to keep referring back to.
- The content fits well into PSHE and could be linked to religious studies or citizenship lessons.
Potential development:
The greatest challenge was keeping the lesson focussed and simple enough, while it is very tempting to find all the connections and dive deep into every aspect, be sure to keep focussed on the key messages so they don’t get lost!
Ideally, this would be delivered over 3 sessions to give sufficient time and thought to each stage. Possible structure:
- Lesson 1: The earth as a closed system
- The jigsaw for about 20 minutes, followed by a detailed class discussion of several cycles.
- Students could draw the carbon, nitrogen, or water cycles out.
- They could write definitions of the terms ‘producer’ ‘consumer’ and ‘decomposer’, adding examples from their everyday life.
- Students could be introduced to the idea of spaceship earth, conducting a thought experiment about what they would need to take with them on a long journey through space.
- Lesson 2: Explaining the causes
- Students should be given more time to look at several examples of different human activities and try to categorise them.
- A few key examples could be explored, perhaps as an independent research task where students them feedback e.g research how overuse of fertilizer impacts the cycles introduced in lesson 1
- Towards the end of session 2, students might be asked to think of the opposites.
- Lesso 3: Focus on Solutions
- Students categorise solutions and come up with their own
- Students identify those which could be implemented in their schools or communities and pick one to act on. They can spend time planning what they will do and feedback in the next lesson.
- This could become a homework project leading to a group presentation on their actions.