With GwyrddNi’s Community Action Phase underway, it was time to adapt our education work to reflect this. After discussing ideas with several teachers, we have decided to offer to schools:
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An interactive climate session (in two parts) which creates opportunities to understand climate change and its impact, discuss our feelings about it, understand what we can do, and start planning actions to tackle the climate challenge.
- Visits to local (and beyond) climate solutions
- Opportunities for the children to develop their community ideas and implement them. This can be a ‘one-off’ action or a more long-term and comprehensive project
The children’s enthusiasm has been clear during our sessions, especially as they set out to gather ideas and decide how they would like to go about responding to their areas’ climate action priorities.
Here is one story that gives a taste of what has been happening so far:
Ysgol Rhosgadfan – Mapping habitat and learning about nature
By Siôn, Dyffryn Nantlle’s facilitator
It is a pleasure to be able to work with local schools on small solutions to climate change, and this year we have held sessions for Ysgol Rhosgadfan and Ysgol Bro Lleu.
In Rhosgadfan we worked with years 3,4,5 and 6. The one-day climate session was a good starting point to build on the children’s understanding of what is changing in the climate, and how we can respond to it locally.
The school has a food growing garden and polytunnel on site, as well as a a regular gardening club, so the children’s understanding of growing food was already amazing. However, the climate session enabled them to place what they are doing in the school garden in a wider context.
Afterwards, we went on an excursion around the village looking for interesting things in the natural world, and created a large map from the perspective of a bird flying high over its habitat, with the things collected on the trip and wonderful pictures from the children on it. We saw primrose budding, all kinds of birds singing and several interesting plants such as unrolling ferns and small yellow gorse flowers, with the heather among them. We want to build on this map to add food such as blackberries, apples and cooking plums as well.
One of the teachers said: “After going for the walk, the children ask a lot more often about the names of things like plants or insects, and point out the ones they learned during the session.”
The children are also very keen to support nature as well as being able to grow their own food, so in the new year we want to start work on establishing wild flower meadows on a piece of grass opposite their garden. They came down to Yr Orsaf’s Ardd Wyllt (wild garden) to start their research and identify wild flowers such as meadowsweet and gennel, and even found a lizard living in the shade of one of the apple trees.
The children’s ideas are so original and innovative and I am looking forward to continuing from September onwards.
While things have started to gain momentum with primary schools, we have been busy developing a suitable session for secondary school pupils. We have trialled this at Ysgol y Moelwyn, Blaenau Ffestiniog, where the school’s enthusiastic young people have been actively developing ideas, and are ready to act!
We will also collaborate with schools to develop local climate resources for the classroom. We are also actively developing education offers for adults, in order to raise awareness and to empower groups by increasing skills and having other learning experiences, in order to enable us to act in our communities. More information on the way soon!
If you work within a school in one of GwyrddNi’s areas and are interested in our education offer, please contact Sara (sara@deg.cymru), our Education Officer.