This is an account of the visit in January by a Year 5 group from Kings Norton Primary School to Birmingham Botanical Gardens & Glasshouses as part of NAEE’s Hugh Kenrick Days bursary scheme. It’s written by class teacher Mr K Lees. Prior to visiting the Botanical gardens, Year 5 had been studying the topic ‘Our Local Area’. During…
This article by Joyce Hallam was published in NAEE’s most recent journal [Vol 120; Spring 2019] which has a focus on the sustainable development goals [SDGs]. Introduction Before the Goals were agreed by the United Nations, a report (Bourn et al, 2016) on the importance and relevance of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and sustainability within the primary curriculum,…
This article by Jamila Kyari is a free download from the Autumn 2018 Green Teacher magazine. It begins: FROM MAKING MINI pizzas and hotdogs to s’mores and chocolate chip cookies, building and cooking with a solar oven does more than make school lunches interesting. It also offers fun opportunities to introduce students to the power and versatility of the sun’s heat.…
Emily Vera and Kate Dawson write about sowing the seeds of mindfulness. It was a warm, spring day with a glimpse of sunshine streaming through the trees when we stopped along the pathway to look at the dandelions. Ludwig, one of our preschoolers, says “ I want to pick one. They are beautiful.” Brianna, turns to…
This article by Iván Asin is another free download from the Summer 2018 Green Teacher magazine. It begins: WE WERE WARNED over a decade ago that about two thirds of the systems that sustain our basic needs are either collapsing, on the verge of collapsing or beyond the point of retrieval.1 Yet, this information has not had any significant effect…
This article by Joy A. Bell is a free download from the Summer 2018 Green Teacher magazine. It begins: ENVIRONMENTAL LITERACY is a cumulative process of learning a variety of concepts, skills, and knowledge of the natural world. It can be especially impactful to introduce children to this process.1 The challenge is finding a hook or entry point. An…
Louise Matschke, Education & Training Manager at the Cape Town Environmental Education Trust (CTEET) writes about environmental education in Cape Town. The metropolitan city of Cape Town, in South Africa, is known for its two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Table Mountain and Robben Island; the only two sites in the world that are in view…
David Whitley argues that environmental education needs imaginative literature. Ecoliteracy was a term that gained currency in environmental education from the late 1990s. During the period leading up to this, the concept of ‘literacy’ had been extended to encompass a whole range of new areas – even including ‘emotional literacy’ – where existing cultural norms seemed inadequate.…
Mervat Batarseh Head of Environmental Education Section at Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature writes about their interactive community and school-based programme on the locally threatened Dead Sea Sparrow. Talking about birds is always an interesting issue for both students and elders. As a professional in the field of environmental education. I have been monitoring…
Mary Sellers FarmBuddies writes about improving the wellbeing of young people and adults. Social Farming, also known as Care Farming, is the practice of offering Family Farms and other similar farming holdings as a form of social service. Some farms can be a specialized treatment farm but more often they remain a typical working farm where…