Celebrate Earth Day in your classroom
22 April 2022
We are celebrating Earth Day by sharing a collection of computing resources you can use with your students to explore this year’s theme: 'Invest in our planet'.
Teach Computing Curriculum
If you have taught the Creating media - Desktop Publishing unit (Y3), why not use your students' skills to create posters advocating for environmental issues?
If you have taught the Using media - Gaining Support for a Cause (Y7) unit, you could ask your students to each write a blog post on a real world environmental cause that they are passionate about.
Barefoot Computing
Recycling Warriors (Y1-2) fosters students’ digital creative skills as they create a digital painting about the importance of recycling. They learn how to use an online digital painting tool through tinkering and then apply what they learn to create two posters.
Planet Protectors (Y3-6) gives students the opportunity to create a stop-motion animation about the dangers of plastics in the ocean. They learn how to use a stop-motion app through tinkering and then apply what they learn as they plan and create their animations.
Computing At School
This excellent article on bringing environmental issues to life provides ideas for both primary and secondary teachers, and is supported by CAS Inspire videos, presentations, lesson ideas, and further reading.
STEM Learning
Watching a Glacier (Y3-6) uses satellite images of the Earth to show how a glacier has changed over almost three decades. Students are asked to measure the glacier to find out how much it has changed in size and to compare false-colour images to suggest how this helps us find out more about environmental change.
My Green City (Y7-9) provides a series of four lessons in which students work in teams to design a sustainable city. They explore examples of sustainability in existing cities around the world and consider the needs of citizens and the challenges of supporting a growing urban population.
In the Exploring Rainforests (Y10-11) activity, students examine changes to forests in cross-border regions of Africa and Borneo using Google Earth Pro to help identify features shown in satellite images and make measurements.
Check out the full range of Earth Day activities from STEM Learning.
Raspberry Pi Foundation
Use Scratch to learn about our planet and how to protect the environment for future generations with a pathway of fun and thought-provoking projects called Protect our planet (all primary ages).
Finally, why not grab a coffee and watch an amazing short film about a young maker called Laura? Since meeting like-minded tech creators at her local CoderDojo, Laura has travelled the world with her friends and the robots they build together. Discover how Laura’s journey to “bring a change to the world” led her to create an autonomous trash-collecting robot and an air pollution-monitoring drone.