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How can Stemville improve its biodiversity?
This activity highlights the various ways the fictitious town of Stemville might improve its biodiversity. It helps pupils understand why biodiversity is important for all living creatures including humans and how high biodiversity can mitigate some of the consequences of climate change.
The activity enables teachers to introduce the work of the Environment Agency into their lessons and deliver elements of the national curriculum and is designed to be delivered either by a teacher or an Environment Agency STEM Ambassador (if one is available) together with a teacher.
The activity starts by asking pupils to consider which type of grass is better from astroturf, a well kept or an overgrown lawn. This is then followed by a discussion on the importance of biodiversity. The main part of the activity is a budgeting challenge for pupils to devise a plan to improve the biodiversity of Stemville by evaluating different biodiversity improvement methods. The aim of the activity is to highlight the various ways biodiversity can be increased and the Environment Agency's role in some of the methods. There are two versions of the biodiversity improvement methods cards. The standard version includes information on each method and a biodiversity score to help pupils identify which methods will have the biggest impact on biodiversity. The extended version does not include this score, so is more challenging as pupils have to use the information on the cards to work out the impact of the method on biodiversity for themselves. Once the evaluation and selection of biodiversity improvement methods is complete, pupils pitch their plan to others.
The activity includes these resources which can be found below:
- Activity guidance for a teacher
- Activity guidance for an Environment Agency STEM Ambassador
- Presentation with supporting notes
- Biodiversity improvement method cards (standard and extended versions)
- Biodiversity improvement method evaluation sheets (standard and extended versions)
- Biodiversity improvement method budgeting sheets
- Exemplar biodiversity improvement method budgets
- Pitch grading sheets
- Certificates to award to pupil participants and/or challenge winners
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