All the resources that you need to support your students to get outside and connect to nature!
On this page you will find:
Ideas to teach the curriculum outside
Activities to connect your students to nature
Resources to survey your school grounds to measure the biodiversity.
The project is a 3 year (September 2025 - July 2028) pilot to fulfil the following aims:
- Identify opportunities to increase green spaces and biodiversity on school grounds.
- Build capacity and confidence of school teaching staff to (a) take students outside the classroom for lessons and (b) to integrate nature sustainability and climate change into their day-to-day curriculum delivery.
- Support students to (a) increase their engagement with nature, (b) develop green skills that will support them in their future lives and careers and (c) learn about green careers.
- Support school staff and students to make nature positive decisions in their day-to-day lives.
- Support staff members responsible for developing schools' climate action plans, ensuring longer-term project impact.
Along with these goals comes a body of support for your schools:
- Funding to pay for cover to release staff for training and curriculum development
- Free teacher CPD delivered by ZSL
- Expertise to support curriculum development for Learning outside the classroom and nature connectedness
- Eco-club support
- Careers fair attendance
- School fair/open evening engagement
Please get in touch with Katie Prestwich or Izzi Wheeler at whipsnadezoolearning.org if you wish for more information about any of these opportunities.
Curriculum linked resources
We would love for teachers to be empowered to move lessons outside or use natural materials in their lessons. To support this and to show that teaching outside is not in addition to delivering the curriculum, we are producing curriculum linked packs full of ideas.
Before you start please read our how to guide and download our outdoor learning plan:
The following subject specific packs are split by sub-topic and pitched to all of the different key stages for you to choose the resources most appropriate to your young people. Idea packs are in green and supporting resources are in white below the key stage pack that they apply to.
We hope you are able to use as many of these ideas as possible, and if you have tried something else, please contact us as we can add your ideas to these packs to keep improving them, they are live documents!
Please watch this space for these to be added, the first few are below already!
Nature Connectedness
Nature connectedness is 'An individual's subjective sense of their relationship with the natural world' (Pritchard et al., 2020)
Many studies have found positive relationships with:
- Overall wellbeing
- Happiness
- Life satisfaction
- Purpose in life
We have produced packs of resources to support your students with their nature connectedness. supporting them to explore the pathways to nature connection:
- Senses - Using all our senses to connect to nature.
- Beauty - Noticing, appreciating and celebrating the beauty of nature.
- Emotions - Seeking, noticing and reflecting.
- Meaning - Exploring Personal and cultural stories that help people see how nature is a part of human culture.
- Compassion - looking after nature helps you care more about it.
First is a pack of 5 minute Nature Connectedness activities, perfect for a calm start to the day, a movement break, a form time; when getting outside for a few minutes would be a big benefit for classroom productivity later in the day.
5-minute Activities for Nature Connection
There are also these supporting proformas for resources you might see featured in the document above:
Surveying school grounds for Biodiversity
We would love to involve the students in the surveying of your school site to see if the biodiversity increases over the duration of the project.
Your school has 6 locations around the site where we would like these surveys to be conducted and they are marked by numbered log disks.
Please use the following resources to conduct these surveys and enter the results onto your school's copy of the Biodiversity sampling spreadsheet (with your school lead).
There are two options for surveying the birds on your site, either analysing their song using an app (Merlin Bird ID), or using an Identification Sheet.
Merlin Bird ID student data collection sheet
Merlin Bird ID student data collection sheet - SEND version
Bird ID student data collection sheet
The information and guidance provided by ZSL are intended for educational purposes only. Responsibility for the safety and supervision of pupils remains with the school and its staff at all times. Teachers should only undertake activities that are appropriate to their setting and must ensure that all activities are planned, risk assessed, and carried out in accordance with their school’s policies, procedures, and safeguarding requirements.