Early Years Teacher
What made you choose biodiversity as your investigation topic?
Teacher: The easiest way for me to undertake the project was to do it from my own classroom because I’m a full-time teacher. So we chose biodiversity and we used the night vision cameras. That was where it began. I picked that because it was more suited to the age of the children. It had to be something I could run in school time alongside everything else that we were doing.
How did you structure the activities?
Teacher: We got the children to understand what animals might visit the grounds at night. We made fact files about the animals. We predicted what we might see. The night vision cameras were set up in a specific area of the grounds. At the end we had an opening event where all the children came to that, and actually one of the nights when I was setting up the camera, a little girl came down with her mum to show her the area and tell her what we’d been doing.
What surprised you most?
Teacher: What surprised me was just the fact that the community, the parents are involved as well. Even when they hadn’t been directly involved, they start seeing the social media stuff. And there was one morning I was going out to go and put the camera down and this dad was like, oh, he’s told me all about this. Like, there was a fox, are you going to put it out again?
What have you taken from this experience?
Teacher: It’s given me a bit more confidence to sort of just get out and like use our school grounds. Realising how easy it was, I suppose, like it felt like a big project to undertake, but actually to get the kids out there, to get them involved, it took a little bit of planning, but it was actually not that difficult to sort of make it happen.
What happens next?
Teacher: We’re having an outdoor day in a couple of weeks actually with the idea that all the children on the same day from reception right up to year six are going to get outside and they’re going to be doing things like each year group can choose their own things. There’s scavenger hunts and bug hotels, but some of it just observing the nature. I’m also going to be rolling out some lessons for reception children around climate change next year because there isn’t really planning out there. I’m going to be doing something either half termly or termly that will roll out throughout the whole year.