Teaching Children About Environmental Issues
Teachers are often left wondering how to teach climate change to their class! This blog post and resources can help you.
Why should students learn about climate change?
Conservation is a very real issue in the world and a subject which is frequently in the news. Children need to be taught about the dangers facing our planet and it needs to be in a delicate and real way.
The duty to teach this thorny subject often falls to teachers and it can be tricky. This can often leave teachers wondering why is teaching climate change important, if it is going to cause disruption?
While we want children to understand the dangers and the trouble that the world is facing, we also don't want to scare them with graphic descriptions and details about dead animals!
Crafting such a delicate lesson takes a lot of thinking about. Some of the best ways to approach this is with honesty and age appropriate pictures. Teaching children about oil spills for example can lead to discussions on how oil affects the feathers on birds, how the sea and fish are affected and what can be done about it. This doesn't mean we avoid the difficult topics just we come at them from an informed place. Don't start out with all the dead fish and move from there, you need to build to it.
Similarly, if you are looking for ideas for teaching about climate change and the destruction of the rainforest. You can start with the need for wood, explaining why these things happen before moving onto the more sensitive areas of climate change and how animals are losing their homes. These are just some ideas for teaching climate change.
Recycling is a great way to bring the subject closer to home. Students can understand that rubbish can be a problem, you can create lessons which show the amount of rubbish generated and how it is shipped to land fills. Let the children collect rubbish from their own play ground and use lots of discussion to talk about the dangers our earth faces.
Resources for teaching climate change
Apart from the above resources, there are more in my shop, such as escape room games, paper and digital, as well as activities and full lessons. Jump over and have a look.
Here is a quick video which shows my escape rooms:
The importance of teaching climate change
The dangers to the environment shouldn't be avoided just because they are difficult subjects and as teachers we have a duty to educate children about the world in which they live.
Check out my free resources and classroom activities here
If you are looking for more ways to teach geography or science lessons check out these blog posts!
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