Environmental Education Sessions for Primary Schools

CORNWALL

Environmental Education Sessions for Primary Schools

2006/2007

Cornwall Wildlife Trust visits schools and other youth groups to deliver curriculum-linked sessions to Key Stage 1 & 2 pupils.

About the sessions

This year there are a number of new and revised sessions on offer - all linked to the National Curriculum at both Key Stages 1 & 2.

Subject areas covered include English, Science, Geography and Citizenship.

Each session is a mix of teaching, games and activities, pitched at different levels to allow all year groups to learn about the subjects.

There is follow-up work included in each teacher’s pack so that extra projects can be devised for the class or the whole school.

Each programme is designed to take up a whole morning or afternoon session allowing for breaks, and is best carried out in the hall to allow enough space for the games to take place.

The cost for each 2-hour session is £60, and the school will be invoiced after the session has taken place.

Sea Quest for Kids (SQ4K)

Seaquest for Kids

Looking at the creatures that inhabit the seas around Cornwall, the children are asked to classify them, work out the adaptations required by mammals to live in a marine environment, formulate food chains, explore the effects of man-made situations on wildlife and think about how they affect their local environment. From simple matching the creature to its habitat, to problem-solving activities, the children learn about the importance and fragility of the marine environment around them.

Bottlenosed dolphin

Small Mammals in School Grounds

Discovering the small mammals that live around them, the children learn about the characteristics that determine the different species and what kinds of habitat each species requires. In one activity, the children use a simple key to determine which creature is pinned to their back, and explore the different senses used by these creatures in a predator-prey game. They can follow up on what they have learned by making a variety of devices to see which creatures visit the school grounds after the school is closed for the night.

Bank vole

Minibeasts

Using special “bug vacuums”, the children collect invertebrates from different areas of the school grounds and compare the characteristics required to survive in each habitat. Using simple keys they can then classify them and draw the physical features that make them what they are. In another activity they can establish what each creature requires in order to live and how they can protect the habitats they have found them in.

Cornwall’s Carnivores

Comparing the physical characteristics of these larger mammals allows the children to develop their observation skills while learning about the differences between obligate carnivores and omnivores. They then use simple clues to identify the animals and what each animal needs to live, including the different senses used by Cornwall’s rarest carnivore, the otter, and the role of a top predator in a freshwater food chain.

European otter

Who’d be a bat?

There are many different species of bat living in a variety of different habitats all over Cornwall, and we rarely see any of them. This session teaches the children about the different species, where they live, how to spot them, how to use a bat detector, how bats hunt using echolocation and how bats find their young in a communal nursery roost of a thousand pups..

Visit to Five Acres Nature Reserve

School groups are welcome to come and enjoy an educational session at Cornwall Wildlife Trust H/Q where they can learn about a variety of habitats within the nature reserve. There is a large wood, two wildlife ponds, a wildlife garden and an outdoor classroom, so sessions can be designed to order or a comparative study of invertebrates within the different habitats can be carried out using pond-dipping, sweep-netting and other collecting techniques.

To book a session or find out further information please contact

Alison Forward
Education Officer
Tel: 01872 273939 / 240777 x 212