Primary Science 175 Climate Emergency
Issue 175 | Published November 2022
Overview
With the latest extreme climate events in the UK and around the world, PS 175 has 'climate emergency' as its theme. It is packed full of ideas for generating discussion and emboldening ideas for enacting practice to help children and their teachers contribute positively to the challenge of climate change through primary science.
First, we meet Robin Minchom, UK Project Manager for Climate Fresk, one of the world’s fastest- growing initiatives in addressing public understanding of climate change. mily Hunt offers similar insight into how fostering a sense of global citizenship in children may be beneficial to countering climate change and offers an overview together with two pragmatic approaches she has found useful in the classroom. Cath Corkery too offers insight into climate awareness-raising activities, but this time from a wider whole-school perspective.
Ben Roger’s article offers a brief overview of the history and detail of the science behind the Greenhouse effect, introducing a welcome synopsis to curricular links. Ben touches on the theme of climate anxiety in children and this is explored in more depth in Caroline Alliston’s piece, where she also reports on the impetus and detail of the resource she has devised to assist primary teachers in approaching climate education with children. Fostering enhanced subject knowledge on climate and improving agency in children in respect of this is also a key theme in work by Amy Strachan and Jemima Davey.
Susie Burr invokes how engagement with primary science can not only assist scientific attainment, but also be of value for mental health and well-being as well as supporting nature. Finally, William Yeomans discusses the long-term success of his 'Clyde in the Classroom' project.