School Workshop: Climate Culture (year 5 and 6)

This workshop helps pupils to understand that there are solutions to climate change. They will see what we are doing in response to climate change at the Eden Project and learn how they can be part of the solution.

Workshop overview

Climate change is the challenge of our lifetime but humans are creative and brilliant problem solvers. We can work together to meet the challenge - lots of people, organisations, businesses and governments already are.

This session was written to illustrate that the solutions are out there, we know what we need to do, and that we can all play a positive part in tackling the climate emergency. Organisations are adapting how they operate in response to the challenge and Eden is leading the way. Individuals can take inspiration and ideas from these organisations and put them into practice in their own lives.

What happens in the workshop

Your students will begin the session by developing their understanding of what climate change actually is and why everybody is talking about it. They will learn about the causes and effects of climate change and be introduced to the idea that dealing with it (and the impacts of it) has become the challenge of our time!

Students will then be introduced to the concept of a carbon footprint. They will learn that this is a useful way for us to think about the impacts of our actions and how almost everything we do, make, and use causes carbon dioxide (or other greenhouse gases) to be released into the atmosphere and contribute to the size of our carbon footprints!

Students will then explore the Eden Project by decoding a set of clues and using maps to help them find particular locations around the site. At each location, they will learn what we are doing to reduce our carbon footprint, record examples of good practice and collect a special 'solutions' token.

We will end the session by sharing the solutions that the students have found and by discussing how the children can apply these ideas to reduce their own carbon footprints. Finally, students will discover how we can all tackle climate change together.