Becoming Beavers – Secondary teacher, Duncan Zuill and his pupils taking the John Muir Award at Levenmouth Academy’s Bat’s Wood project present their experiences in this short video Becoming Beavers in Bat’s Wood . Voiceovers were recorded during this lockdown and compiled on footage taken towards the end of last term. This video draws together the past, the present and the future in the Academy’s bespoke place-based environmental education project with the theme of flooding.
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Curious about the Rainforest – The Conversation recently held an on-line session responding to children’s questions on the rainforest. It featured Louise Gentle, Senior Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation at Nottingham Trent University, and Liana Chua, Reader in Anthropology at Brunel University London. You can watch it on YouTube.
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Our Purpose in Poetry – The poem Earthrise was written by US Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman and dedicated to Al Gore and the Climate Reality Project. Gorman, you’ll remember, read at President Biden’s swearing-in. You can read the Earthrise text here, and listen to Gorman herself reading it here.
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A Day in the European Court of Human Rights – Six youth campaigners, aged 8 to 20 are taking legal action against 33 countries at the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that governments are moving too slowly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The court has confirmed that the case is a priority and is being fast tracked with the defendant countries having until February 26th to respond. The 33 countries being sued are: member states of the EU, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Turkey and Ukraine. There’s more detail at Crowd Justice.
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Solutions from Nature – The BioLearn Challenge invites secondary schools to rethink how their school and community can become more sustainable. It uses nature as the inspiration to create solutions to human design challenges. There are lots of links with STEM subjects, project-based and real-world learning. Teams or individuals are asked to identify a design challenge in their school and/or community, to explore how nature solves similar problems, and then to use their insight from nature to create a solution. A full set of teaching resources, guidance notes and references are provided. Full details can be found here. The challenge officially launches on the 15th March, and ends on the 17th May. Support webinars will be held for interested teachers prior to Easter.
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GCSE News – No, it’s not England’s increasingly criticised exam, but the Global Council for Science and the Environment (GCSE) which is a US-based non-governmental organization established in 1990 that promotes the use of science to inform environmental decision-making. GCSE works with scientists, educators, policymakers, business leaders, and officials at all levels of government. GCSE was formerly the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE). You can click here to learn more about its climate goals.
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Goodbye to Gas – The UK government has proposed that new gas boilers will be banned by the mid-2030s with low-carbon alternatives such as heat pumps and hydrogen boilers being used instead. The recent energy white paper said that the country will have to “transition completely away from natural gas boilers” as part of the target to hit net-zero emissions by 2050. Currently, around 1.7 million gas boilers are installed every year, and a consultation will be held on ending gas grid connections entirely for new homes perhaps as soon as the mid-2020s. The white paper states that the 4 million off-grid households that rely on stored oil or gas for heating and hot water will also have to switch to zero-carbon alternatives.
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The facts about climate change – Small Gases, Big Effect is a new book from Penguin (to be published next month). According to a widely circulated email from the publisher, the book “explains all you need to know about climate change in under an hour” which is quite a claim. The book, they say, combines “clear, thoughtful writing with illuminating graphics [and] presents complex scientific evidence in a way that everyone will find easy to understand.” We wonder if the DfE will be sending a copy (or three) to every school as discounts are available for multiple orders.
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Climate Futures : Youth Perspectives – From March 9th to 18th, Cumberland Lodge will host a free four-part virtual conference via zoom to explore how young people think about environmentalism, stewardship of the natural world, grassroots activism, and the limitations or possibilities of representative democracy and international collaboration with regard to the future of our planet. Participants will discuss the challenges and opportunities of transnational political action, and examine how young people imagine a future in which humanity’s impact on the planet will be less destructive. This virtual conference provides a platform for young people to express their views, visions and expectations ahead of the 2021 Pre-COP26 in Milan, Italy and the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26). If you are interested in taking part, click here.
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Global Goals Teach In – SOS-UK has launched its fourth annual Teach in on the Global (sustainable development) Goals. This will will run from the 22nd of February to the 5th of March 2021. The annual campaign calls on secondary and tertiary educators to pledge to include the Goals in their teaching and learning throughout the two weeks.
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39 Ways to save the Planet – There are 13 programmes about climate change available from BBC Radio 4, in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society. These present ideas to relieve the stress that climate change is exerting on the planet. In the first week of programmes Tom Heap meets the experts behind a selection of fascinating carbon-cutting ideas; super-strong building timber, wind turbine repairing robots, secondary education for women in the developing world, planting seagrass and rice without the paddy field. In the second week he meet the experts behind a selection of fascinating carbon-cutting ideas; preventing food waste with smarter chilling, squeezing more from the sun with next-gen solar panels, taking Siberia back to the Pleistocene era, fighting for the planet in the courts and the plants that can step up on photosynthesis.
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Green Teacher – Every edition of the Canadian educational magazine, Green Teacher includes articles that are freely available, whether you subscribe or not. 2020 magazines included articles on Sustainability Passion Projects by Shakira Provasoli and Growing Environmental Hope Amid a Pandemic, by Helen Corveleyn, Lauren Madden, and Louise Ammentorp. Details of other free articles can be found here.