There’s a whole world of resources to support classroom work and discussion on international green issues. Julia Frankl chooses some of the best
The environment, sustainable development and climate change are all hot topics this year in the media, in politics and around the dinner table. Whether debating the effects of 4x4s in our cities or the impact of deforestation in South America, everyone has an opinion – but is it all just hot air? Teachers have a unique opportunity to explore these controversial issues with pupils, helping them reach their own conclusions and decide what the appropriate responses may be. A number of resources are available which can help to stimulate this necessary debate.
This booklet has an unlikely beginning, with a teacher’s visit to Gambia to learn about climate change. The trip inspired a creative and successful project to support pupils’ exploration of this complex subject. The project uses an enquiry-based approach which encourages cross-curricular opportunities and is supported by Ofsted and the QCA. Teachers like it because children ‘are able to challenge their own preconceived ideas’ and ‘feel they can make a difference’.
The booklet shares ideas, activities and case studies. It details the benefits of an enquiry approach and offers support on how to deal with some of the challenges. The classroom activities (with diagrams, stories, photos and web links) look at four questions: ‘What is climate change?’, ‘Why does it matter?’, ‘What can we do about it?’ and ‘What have we learned and how?’
An excellent guide to planning and running enquiry-based learning on climate change, Climate change – local & global is published by Tide, priced at £10 and can be ordered at www.tidec.org or T 0121 202 3290.
Encouraging students to explore critically the issues surrounding sustainable development is the aim of this booklet and CD. It uses two different teaching approaches: philosophy for children and critical skills. These both encourage tolerance and respect for others, improve listening, speaking and thinking skills and build confidence and self-esteem.
The pack looks at the differences between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’. It questions what we need to survive and how we can meet these needs in the future. Each section has curriculum links to subjects including citizenship, science, PSHE and geography.
The booklet starts with case studies from South Africa and Cumbria, and then explores four main areas: food and water, homes, sustainable development and refugees. Each theme has lead-in activities, summaries of the outdoor sessions and follow-up activities. Although the activities were trialled at Grizedale Forest in Cumbria, they can be used easily in other outdoor sites.
The CD contains support material with everything you will need including full lesson plans, resources such as activity sheets and cards, photos, background information and additional reading. Priced at £22, it is published by the Cumbria Development Education Centre; to order, e-mail office@cdec.org.uk or T 01539 430231.
This DfES website supports the 2006–07 Year of Action on Sustainable Development, offering a great deal of information on school management as well as teaching. It suggests eight ‘doors’ to developing a sustainable school (through a global dimension, for example, or by addressing travel and traffic).
Other content includes National Curriculum requirements and opportunities, a large resource library, support services, case studies and an image gallery. There are also details of funding opportunities, training packages and sustainable development activities by region. The critical skills approach of the first two resources complements some of the information on this site.
The Sustainable Schools website is at www.teachernet.gov.uk/sustainableschools
If you are interested in exploring other resources that cover these themes, or are looking for school case studies, local support services or further curriculum information, visit www.globaldimension.org.uk
Julia Frankl is editor of GlobalDimension.org.uk – a guide to educational resources with a global dimension – at the Development Education Association.
Sustainable Schools has caught the imagination of many a teacher, and as well as tapping in to the curriculum it taps in to the heart and mind of many a student too. Perhaps that is not so surprising: it’s a genuinely worthwhile avenue of study, it’s about growing up, forgetting about barriers between people and looking at the future of the planet. And it has a practical side which allows for scientific investigation, solutions, measurement and data comparison.
But you can take it a step further, beyond the classroom and out into the world, to confront the real issues. Find out what schools in other countries are doing. Find out from your school partners how the same issues are tackled in their countries. Write about how you recycle and re-use resources in the school and exchange this information with your partner school. Take part in a project to measure the effects of climate change around the world. Sustainable Schools offers activities for all levels of schools and it’s free to join.
Through the Global Gateway, a secondary school in Liverpool is linking with a school on a Fairtrade co-operative in Nepal. Its pupils help by suggesting popular styles of knitwear so the products can be better marketed in the UK. While they do that, they learn about Fairtrade and the sustainability of a village industry as opposed to a multi-national using migrant workers in the Asian garment industry.
Other schools are taking part in a project to compare their ‘eco footprints’, discovering that we all share one planet but in the UK we use on average more than three times our fair share of the world’s resources.
The Global Gateway has produced a free factsheet for working with other schools around the world on the theme of the environment. It includes all the ideas listed above and gives directions on putting them into practice. To get hold of it just e-mail editor@globalgateway.org putting ‘Environment factsheet’ in the subject line and giving the name and age group of your school.
Further information
The Global Gateway is funded by the DfES and managed by the British Council. It’s a website and free support service with schools all over the world signed up and ready to work together. You can have as many international partners as you like, and the site also gives you all the information you need to build the partnership and find funding for it from the various grants available to support internationalism in schools.
All the links and guidance you need are here, whether you want to do an interlinked sports tournament with Germany, Poland and Spain, a cultural information exchange with Japan, an ICT and science project with Africa or study sustainable development with a school in India. Hundreds of online resources help teachers add an international dimension to a lesson or teach whole modules from the curriculum in an up-to-date, topical and globally aware way. Lots of the resources are great to show on a whiteboard, and some of the projects to plan and enjoy with partner schools use ICT in an imaginative way to really connect and communicate around the world from the classroom.
Links for professional development show a particularly exciting aspect of internationalism for teachers and school leaders, who can study abroad and participate in teacher exchanges or foreign visits.
www.globalgateway.org
| 
