P4 to S2

A series of interactive lessons about the importance of all living things and what we can do to look after our natural world. 

Lesson 1: The importance of all living things

To kickstart Natural Scotland Week we will look at the current state of nature in Scotland and what is being done to help create more spaces for nature. Along with our friends from Buglife, we will dive into the world of some little known and unloved creatures to understand the importance of all living things. 

Following the lesson, we invite you to become a scientist and observe something living in your grounds. You can also get involved with supporting Buglife by giving unsung garden heroes a home, creating hoverfly lagoons our taking part in the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme.  

Lesson 2: The wonderful world of moss

To help the natural world thrive, we need to look after whole ecosystems. But what is an ecosystem and how do its living and non-living parts work together? To find out, join us as we journey into the magical world of moss where big things are happening on a tiny scale. A big thank you to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh for supporting development of this lesson. 

You will need to pause the lesson after 23 minutes and click this link to view the video mentioned: Tardigrade video.

Follow up by conducting your own investigation into the wonderful moss in your grounds. 

Lesson 3: Behind the scenes at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

The team from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh present live from their plant nursery in Edinburgh. Give your pupils an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the rare Scottish plants we are growing in our plant nursery for replanting into the wild. You'll hear all about the Scottish Plant Recovery team’s hair-raising efforts to track down our most endangered plants and their ingenious experiments to grow plants in new ways. This session is supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Scottish Government Nature Restoration Fund.

Follow up by creating a piece of persuasive writing to help support nature. 

Lesson 4: Connecting the dots with wildlife corridors

Whilst it is important to protect individual ecosystems, we know that plants and animals do not stay in one place. They need to move between different areas to find food, water and shelter as well as expand their populations. To help them do this we need to create corridors that they can use to move. In this lesson NatureScot show us how we can use the NatureScot Nature Discovery Map to create nature corridors using school grounds and surrounding areas. 

Follow up by planning how your school could form part of a nature corridor with our filling in the gaps resource. 

Assembly

Assembly with a quiz of what we have learned this week and photos of work you have sent in during the week.