An investigation where groups explore their school grounds through focused activities and games to discover where and how plants and animals live. Sessions can be taught to help with teacher led classroom follow-ups, e.g. developing areas of your grounds, creating wildlife guides and I-spy trails.
Key concepts: habitats, needs for life, food chains, plant structure and function, nutrients, plant growth, variation.
Learning outcomes:
By the end of the programme the students will be able to:
- Explain that a habitat is the home of a specific community of plants and animals.
- Understand that plants and animals within a habitat interact in a number of ways.
- Understand the terms producer, consumer, herbivore and carnivore.
- Explain that all food chains start with plants that make their own food using sunlight.
- List resources that plants need to survive – water, sunlight, nutrients and air.
- Name the different parts of a plant – root, trunk, branches, leaf, flowers.
- Identify common plants and trees in school grounds.
Sessions are designed to introduce or extend programme of learning and are individually planned during the pre-site visit.
Activities might include:
Plant resource game – a short game that explorers the needs of plants, and illustrates in a fun way why some plants did not get all the resources they needed.
Leaf slides – exploring the role of leaves and the variety of trees in their school grounds.
Pollination game – children become different parts of a flower which is pollinated by some helpful bees!
Habitat mapping – children become nature detectives and use their specially tuned skills to look for clues and evidence of plants and animals living in their school grounds.