Ages Primary and
Grouping secondary
Mixed
Environment Day – Lesson plan Date
Duration
ability
--/--/----
1 hour
Subjects
• Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship
• Science
Strands
• ESDGC
o The natural environment
o Climate change
• Science
o Interdependence of organisms: how human activity affects the global environment
o The sustainable Earth
• Literacy
o Oracy: respond thoughtfully to others’ ideas, asking pertinent questions.
o Reading: read with concentration texts, on-screen and on paper, that are new to them, and
understand the information in them; collate and summarise relevant information.
o Writing: plan writing making choices about the best ways to present content for effect; adapt
structures in writing for different contexts; select and organise ideas and information to give a
clear and full account identify areas for improvement in their writing, edit and redraft.
Guiding question
• What is the biggest threat to the environment and how can we prevent it?
Key Teaching Points
About the Concept
All the physical surroundings on Earth are called the environment. The environment includes everything living
and everything non-living. Changes in the environment affect living things. Some changes are natural. They
include weather conditions, the wearing away (erosion) of rocks and soil, and natural disasters such as
earthquakes. However, people make changes in the environment too and many of these changes are harmful
to living things.
Learning Outcomes:
• identify any threats to the environment
• understand how these environmental work
• recognise how these issues can be prevented.
Differentiation: through peer support and mixed-ability groupings, varied questioning
techniques
• Aim ‘what’ questions at lower ability, selecting key information and aim ‘how’ question at more
able to develop interpretation and analysis skills.
• For more able, learners need to use a variety of advanced literary devices within their
persuasive poster homework activity (e.g. tripling) whereas lower ability may choose one or two
that they aim to use (e.g. adjectives).
• For SEN, ensure they have a confident learner assessing their work who can give constructive
feedback of their poster.
• For extra support, some students could just focus on one main threat to the environment
throughout the lesson to give them more focus in final task.
Materials
• Books, pens and pencils
• Whiteboards (optional)
• Lesson worksheet
Key Vocabulary
• Endangered species
• Pollution
• Greenhouse effect
• Deforestation
• Environment
• Extinct
• Evolution
Progression of Learning and Teaching
Introduction: Slide 1 and 2 (5 minutes)
Introduce the title/topic and learning objects for the lesson.
Lesson Starter: Slide 3 (5 minutes)
Ask learners to discuss the following question: ‘what do you think is the greatest threat to our
environment?’
Teaching suggestions: To challenge more able learners, ask ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions. For instance,
‘why do you think this is the greatest threat?’
Worksheet: Slide 4
Give the learners the worksheet and introduce it. The worksheet is for them to fill in as they go through
the lesson and write down what they have learnt in the relevant columns.
Main Teaching: Slide 5 and 6 (10 minutes)
Introduce the environment, looking at what it is and discussing 3 main threats to it. Read information
through with the class and get them to fill in their worksheets as they make their way through.
Teaching suggestions: Get the learners to highlight any words they do not understand (see vocabulary
list) and either a) search for the answer using Hwb/Britannica or ask peers. Can also ask learners to
read from board to enhance literacy skills.
Quiz: Slide 7 (5 minutes)
Assess the learners on what they learnt from the information provided through a quiz where they fill in
the blank spaces and then ask them to reflect on this, listing 3 things they have learnt about the
environment and threats to it so far.
Teaching suggestions: This can be done as a class to differentiate harder questions or individually
using whiteboards to answer the questions.
Main Teaching: Slide 8 (10 minutes)
Read information about the impact of these threats to the environment with the class. They can add to
their worksheet during this time too.
Writing Task: Slide 9 (15 minutes)
Learners are to create a presentation based on one of the threats to the environment they have learnt
about. This can be in any form such as PowerPoint, speech, diagram, etc.
Teaching suggestions: Allow more able to create success criteria for the presentation. This will then
help guide less able learners through the activity, having more clear objectives.
Plenary Task: Slide 10 (5 minutes)
Ask learners to assess their own work and reflect on what they have learnt by writing down 3 things
they know now that they did not at the start of the lesson.
Teaching suggestions: Allow learners to have time to write down what they could have done to
improve. In particular, more able learners can give feedback to the class example of techniques they
used and why it was effective.
Summary: Slide 11 and 12 (5 minutes)
Recap the learning objectives with the learners and show them where they could develop their
knowledge further.
Assessment Methods
• Think- pair- share
• Self-assessment
• White boards (Quiz – Slide 7)
• Presentation (lesson)
• Poster (homework activity)
• Targeted questioning
• Feedback from discussion
• Questioning:
o Slide 3: What do you think is the greatest threat? Why? Do you know ways this could be
prevented?
o Slide 7: What have you learnt so far that you did not know before?
o Slide 8: Before we start, do you know what impact these environmental issues are
having on Earth?
o Slide 9: What do we need to include in our presentation?
o Slide 10: What have you learnt overall this lesson that you had not known before?
