Real science for the topics your eco team already works on.

Units by topic

The ten topics are Biodiversity, Energy, Global Citizenship, Healthy Living, Litter, Marine, School Grounds, Transport, Waste and Water. We matched each of our units against them and listed only the ones that fit. Several lessons fit more than one topic.

Biodiversity

• Who Lives Here? (Grades 3–4 · Years 4–5)England NC
  Count what lives in two different schoolyard spots, then judge which animals each spot suits.
  Start with: Who lives in our schoolyard?, Who can live here, and who can't?
• Food Webs: Who Eats Whom? (Grade 5 · Year 6)England NC
  A yarn food web shows how far the loss of one species spreads, and a count of the life under a log measures what lives in one small spot.
  Start with: Can we count the life under a log?, What would happen if the wolves disappeared?
• Flowers, Fruit and Seeds: How Plants Make More Plants (Grades 3–5 · Years 4–6)England NC
  Take a real flower apart and use a cotton bud as a model bee to find out why pollinators matter.
  Start with: What is a flower really for?

Energy

• Power Up: Where Electricity Comes From (Grade 6 · Year 7)England NC
  Where classroom electricity comes from, a wind machine that does real work, and the case for and against solar power.
• Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better (Grades 4–6 · Years 5–7)
  One of four investigations measures whether the classroom is wasting electricity.
  Start with: Is our classroom wasting electricity?
• Keep It Cool: Ice, Insulation and Staying Comfortable (Grades 3–5 · Years 4–6)England NC
  Build a cool box from recycled materials and measure how well insulation slows the flow of heat.
  Start with: Can you build a cool box that beats the heat?

Global Citizenship

• The Water Cycle, Start to Finish (Grades 3–6 · Years 4–7)England NC
  Why some towns run short of water and some families walk hours to fetch it: pupils chart where Earth's fresh water really is.
  Start with: Where is all of Earth's water?
• Living with Water: Salt, Rice and the Mekong (Grades 4–5 · Years 5–6)
  Pupils design a house that stays dry in the flood season and advise a village in the Mekong Delta.
  Start with: How can a house stay dry when the Mekong floods?

Healthy Living

• How Your Body Works (Grades 3–5 · Years 4–6)England NC
  Pupils measure their own pulse before and after exercise, follow their lunch through a model gut, and run a handwashing fair test with glitter germs.
  Start with: What happens to your lunch?, Where do germs hide?, Why does your heart beat faster when you run?
• Think Like a Scientist: The Scientific Method (Grades 3–6 · Years 4–7)England NC
  The real story of the doctor who found that handwashing saves lives, told as a case file.
  Start with: What did Ignaz Semmelweis discover?

School Grounds

• Who Lives Here? (Grades 3–4 · Years 4–5)England NC
  A schoolyard survey with string squares and hand lenses.
  Start with: Who lives in our schoolyard?
• Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better (Grades 4–6 · Years 5–7)
  Pupils measure shade to decide where a new tree would help most.
  Start with: Where would a new tree help most?
• Weather Detectives (Grade 5 · Year 6)
  Finding the hottest spot in the schoolyard.
  Start with: Is it hotter by the slide?
• Restless Earth: Fossils, Soils, Volcanoes and Plates (Grades 4–7 · Years 5–8)England NC
  Shake a soil sample in a jar, measure the layers and choose the best soil for a garden bed.
  Start with: What is soil made of?
• Rocks and Erosion: How Land Changes Shape (Grade 4 · Year 5)England NC
  Model a bare slope and a covered one, make it rain, and recommend how to stop a real slope washing away.
  Start with: What protects a hillside from washing away?
• Plants and Seeds: What Does a Seed Need? (Grade 1 · Year 2)England NC
  Find out what a seed needs to grow, then plan a garden for a character in the story.
  Start with: What does a seed need to grow?

Waste

• Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better (Grades 4–6 · Years 5–7)
  Pupils sort and weigh the school's own garbage and take a recommendation to the principal or caretaker.
  Start with: What's in our garbage?
• Food Webs: Who Eats Whom? (Grade 5 · Year 6)England NC
  The science behind a compost heap: sealed mould bags and buried leaf bags show how decomposers return dead matter to the soil.
  Start with: Who cleans up?

Water

• Clean Water Challenge: Mixtures, Dissolving and Separating (Grade 5 · Year 6)England NC
  Dissolving, filtering muddy water and getting fresh water from salt water with a solar still.
• The Water Cycle, Start to Finish (Grades 3–6 · Years 4–7)England NC
  Where the water in your glass has been, how little of Earth's water is fresh, and a mini water cycle in a bowl.
• Earth Day Investigations: Make Your School Better (Grades 4–6 · Years 5–7)
  Measuring how much water a dripping tap wastes.
  Start with: How much water does a dripping tap waste?
• Our Living Planet (Grade 4 · Year 5)England NC
  The water cycle, caught in a bag on the window.
  Start with: Where does rain come from?
• Weather Watchers: What Will the Sky Do Today? (Grades K–2 · Years 1–3)
  For the youngest: build a rain gauge, measure the rain for a week, and see what happens when rain lands on grass, soil and pavement.
  Start with: How much rain fell?

Climate change

• Climate Clues (Grade 6 · Year 7)
  Not one of the ten topics, but most eco teams come to it. Climate Clues compares a town's old and new temperature records and reads tree rings, so pupils see the difference between a cold week and a changing climate.
  Start with: Is this winter colder than when your grandparents were kids?, What's the difference between weather and climate?

Topics we don't cover yet

We have no units on Litter, Marine or Transport. We'd rather say so than stretch a lesson to fit. If your eco team needs one, tell us which: requests decide what we write next.

Fieldbook Learning isn't affiliated with, or endorsed by, Eco-Schools, Keep Britain Tidy or the Foundation for Environmental Education. We use the topic names only to describe what each lesson is about.