Sustainability and Climate Action
Year 6 residential to Malham, Yorkshire. Children hike over three days learning about access to the countryside, how the countryside is managed and ways in which it is protected, including the Country Code.
Through rich and practical experience, children develop a fascination with the creatures which exist alongside us. They learn about the fragile eco-system and how it can be disrupted by climate change and human behaviours.
Children are given opportunity to explore different outdoor environments, learning about habitats and how to behave in outdoor spaces, co-existing with the wildlife.
What is Climate Change?
The challenge of climate change is formidable. For children and young people to meet it with determination, and not with despair, we must offer them not just truth, but also hope. Learners need to know the truth about climate change – through knowledge-rich education. They must also be given the hope that they can be agents of change, through hands-on activity and, as they progress, through guidance and programmes allowing them to pursue a green career pathway in their chosen field (DFE 2023).
There are many factors that can make the Earth warmer and colder including:
greenhouse gases caused by human activity,
deforestation, where more than half of the world’s surface has been ploughed and paved,
ozone layer trapping heat closer to the Earth’s surface
different types of air pollution which have different effects on the atmosphere.
Children learn about each through different curriculum subjects, particularly English, science and geography.
What can we do?
The DFE has called on all education sectors to create a sustainability climate action plan to show how we, as a school community, can support national and international initiatives which are aimed at protecting the world through direct climate action. As a school, we have important role to play in this, particularly reducing our environmental footprint to work towards net zero and giving all children, young people and adults the knowledge and skills to thrive in the green economy and to help restore nature.
Through their learned and lived experiences from early years to Year 6, our children will develop a broad knowledge and understanding of the importance of nature, sustainability and the causes and impact of climate change and to translate this knowledge into positive action and solutions.
Using the four areas identified in the DFE’s Sustainability and climate change strategy: Sustainability and climate change: a strategy for the education and children’s services systems - GOV.UK , our sustainability and climate action plan will focus on:
Decarbonisation e.g. taking action to reduce carbon emissions and becoming more energy efficient.
Adaptation and Resilience e.g. taking action to reduce the risk of flooding and overheating.
Biodiversity e.g engaging with National Education Nature Park Home | Education Nature Park
Climate Education and Green Careers e.g. knowledge rich comprehensive teaching about climate change.
It will also include:
Creating an environment from an early age where we can connect to nature is essential for self-enforcement in protecting and valuing nature, ensuring our children will:
spend time in nature and learn more about it
become actively involved in the improvement of their local environment
know that regular contact with green spaces can have a beneficial impact on their physical and mental health.
Climate adaptation and decarbonisation activities can provide powerful learning opportunities, ensuring our children will:
participate in the implementation of climate adaptation measures
find out more about the impact of energy and water use
See sustainability brought to life in the buildings around them, allowing them to gain experiences which will enhance and contextualise their learning.
Find our more about our ambitions in our Sustainability and Climate Action Plan.
Opening Worlds - the humanities and climate change
Our Key Stage 2 primary humanities programme builds on learning in EYFS and Key Stage 1, by uniquely addressing the study of humans in society through time including their interaction with the planet.
Understanding of climate change is developed and children are prompted to informed, responsible action on various scales.
Scope: the overall geography programme builds a comprehensive knowledge base for ensuring that pupils are in a position to understand the problem geographically and scientifically, both now and in the future.
In each year pupils come at this issue from many angles – rain forests, oceans, climate, land use, human interaction with resources and sustainability are addressed again and again, in contrasting regions of the globe, until the more sophisticated problem-solving and enquiries pupils will undertake in Year 6 are based on very firm foundations of pupil knowledge, interest and motivation.
Coherence: the overall geography programme ensures that pupils’ encounters with themes pertinent to climate change which complement each other explicitly; moreover, the additional knowledge pupils gain about human action, human exploitation of other humans and the land, beliefs associated with resources and the land, ensures that pupils gain a rich sense of period and sense of place that makes the study of those
regions of the globe where climate change is most visible or being accelerated is richly memorable in its visual colour and stories of human interaction (eg Antarctic, Amazon basin, various tourist areas, immediate local references in community procurement of food in local areas)
Rigour: understanding climate change demands proper geography and proper science; instead of superficial arguments reliant only on the moral case, pupils will understand how geographical data has shown us climate change at work, how specifically geographical questions have shaped enquiries which help geographers to gain the new knowledge that they need to establish the causes, pace and effects of climate change, how patterns of interaction and interdependence make bad habits hard to break and what geographical thinking can do to help us tackle this.
Sequencing: each new geographical issue or topic builds on the last and prepares for the next so that the cumulative effect of knowledge about and disposition to act for climate change is powerful.
Gallery
Please enjoy our photographs below which we hope speak 1000 words about our commitment to helping children access green spaces and learn to value the environment, locally and globally, whilst appreciating the positive impact they can have on the world around us.
Children visit London. They learn about the significance of the river in the development of settlements. Also, how we care for rivers today and the past impact of human living, e.g. disposing of excrement/pollution.
Children travel to London using the train and navigate London on the Tube, harnessing more sustainable modes of travel.
Liverpool John Moore's University (LJMU) has worked with Hatton Hill to develop a sustainability project. The sustainability project takes place annually from Reception to Year 6.
Through LJMU, children experience potential Green career opportunities.
One LJMU opportunity was to consider ways in which we can clean water. Children created filtration systems.
Through the curriculum and visits, children experience learning about the outdoors and outdoor learning. For example, children learn to identify native species through exploration.
The Year 6 residential includes a hike around Ingleton Falls. Children see the course of a river developing an understanding of the significance of clean waterways for humans and animals.
Children have fun outdoors. We know being outdoors improves levels of happiness and wellbeing - we want children to know and experience this.
Children learn how we manage our environment to produce food and the importance of farming.
Children have hands on experience, learning to care for living things which live with us and also help us.
We say thank you for our food and recognise that food is not evenly distributed around the world, considering why. We question our own behaviours, e.g. wasting food.
We visit different natural environments considering the challenges for wildlife in each and the human impact.
Children are taught to care for living things. They understand that all things have the right to exist in peace and safety.
Children develop an understanding of why each living thing needs a unique habitat and our responsibilities as global citizens to protect eco-systems.
Fragile eco-systems are explained from a young age. Children are taught how some eco-systems, e.g. rainforests, support the whole planet and how their loss will impact on global warming.
We want children to love and be fascinated by the world around them. We teach them the fragility of this and how we can make a difference, even at a young age.
Through story-telling, we consider the impact of human activity and the ways in which nature learns to adapt. We also talk of success stories - we empower children to know that we can be a force for good and that it is not 'too late'.
Our Sustainability and Climate Action plan explains our new targets for 2025-26, whilst maintaining the good practice already in place.