11 - 14 Years (Key Stage 3)
Our lesson ideas, which have been created in conjunction with Eco-Schools, are intended to enhance learning and embed sustainability into your teaching.
They are ideas designed to inspire and provoke further questioning and investigation by young people into social and environmental issues. They can be adapted in a variety of ways to suit your needs.
To see which subject areas the lesson ideas cover and how they link to the curriculum you can download our curriculum grid. To find out how they fit with the Eco-Schools 9 topics, download our Eco-Schools topic grid.
Sign up to our Love Where You Live campaign and, if you have not yet done so, join Eco-Schools to receive updates on all campaigns.
Lesson Ideas
1. Community facebook page (download pdf)
To create an active and engaging Facebook group for the local community that explores how we can make our local environment better for everyone.
2. Local heroes (download pdf)
Students research, produce and broadcast a special news programme to highlight and showcase local heroes.
3. Mentor a business (download pdf)
To take the role of a sustainability consultancy for a small local company and create and present a sustainability evaluation report and strategy to the company.
4. Sound in a bin (download pdf)
To create a sound that would be entertaining to hear coming out of a bin as you drop litter into it to encourage others to use it!
5. This is our town (download pdf)
Students make a short video of their area in order to communicate to others what their community means to them.
6. TLC for the community (download pdf)
Students find a space in the local community, which needs a bit of loving, and over a longer period of time, provide some TLC to improve it for themselves and their community.
7. What a mess (download pdf)
To plan and host the debate: This house believes our community is a mess and…
8. Community scavenger hunt (download pdf)
Students plan and hold a scavenger/treasure hunt for a local primary school around the local community so all the students can gain a better appreciation of their immediate environs and understanding of how to make it better
9. If I were a councillor (download pdf)
To understand the role of a councillor or MP and for students to discuss what they would do if they took the role. Students present their case to the local councillor or MP.
10. Mentor an adult (download pdf)
Students review the role adults play in their local community and the impact they have on their localenvironment or socially. With this in mind they select an adult to mentor, giving the adult an opportunity to see issues from a pupil’s perspective and the changing world in which they live.
11. Our way (download pdf)
To imagine a world without adults and decide the way in which you would deal with waste and litter
12. Teenage dirtbag (download pdf)
To carry out a student survey in the school regarding rubbish in order to determine why students drop rubbish and provide solutions to Love Where You Live to encourage 13-16 year olds to stop dropping rubbish.
13. That special place (download pdf)
Students photograph members of the local community in a space in the community that is special to them in order to see their community from a different perspective and to help others view their community through someone else’s eyes. Students gain an appreciation of their local spaces as being shared spaces.