Year 4 Climate Crisis Project

Year 4 have been learning about climate change and the environment across the Spring and Summer terms, through their English, Science, Art and Geography lessons.

In English we have read some brilliant books linked to the environment which the children have written some fantastic final pieces on. Books explored include:

‘Wilderness War’ by Julia Green

‘The Wild Robot Escapes’ by Peter Brown

‘Greenling’ by Levi Pinfold

‘The Flood’ by Alvaro F. Villa 

‘Poems from a Green and Blue Planet’ edited by Sabrina Mahfouz;

‘The Promise’ by Nicola Davies

Our science lessons have focused on ‘Living Things’ within our environment such as pollinators and the important role they play in sustaining a healthy eco-system. The children have also explored how they are vital in maintaining and growing our crops and looked at the threats they face from climate change and global warming. The children have also been working with ‘Wild Hive- Education Ecological Collective’ run by one of our fantastic parents, where they have started to learn about sustainability and growing their own crops as well as building their own bee hotel. Through all of this, the children have built an understanding of the importance of taking care of the environment around them and the key role these wonderful insects play.

Through our English texts, the children have unpicked key threats the planet faces such as deforestation, over-use of plastic and the loss of habitats. Did you know that the amount of Amazon Rainforest removed in April this year, was nearly double that compared to a year ago? The children have really thought about the impact that we all have on the world, and the little things we can do that make a huge difference from  recycling, re-using and reducing our waste and plastic to using less electricity.

It really helped us understand why we need to all think carefully about what we do, if we don’t want to have more extreme weather and the loss of certain species.

We decided that our Art Project would be centred around the positive versus the negative impacts our world sees and we wanted to re-use a range of materials to create our pieces. We looked at Andy Goldsworthy as a key artist to understand how he re-uses items from nature to create his masterpieces. This inspired us to use our recycled materials in creative ways to show aspects such as deforestation, pollution, plastic in the oceans but also the positive impact of flowers, plants and pollinators.

The children worked in small groups, choosing something that stood out to them and created their final pieces using old bicycle wheels as their base. We then collated all of the wheels to create one large final project. See the document below for each group’s final pieces and ideas: