Gill Lewis: World Environment Day

Gill Lewis writes adventure stories about wildlife and conservation, including the Willow Wildthing series. This event centres around the theme of World Environment Day but is perfect for inspiring a love of conservation at any time of the year! Gill reads from Willow Wildthing and the Dragon's Egg, tells us about the environmental issues that inspire her writing such as rewilding, and answers questions from pupils.

A video transcript is available to download below.

If you only do one thing...

We know time is tight, so here is just one activity you could complete before or after watching the broadcast with Gill Lewis.

Life on land (SOC 2-08a, LIT 2-09a)

This activity is from the ScotDec resource Explore the Global Goals – 17 activities for Primary Schools(this link will open in a new window).

Explain to pupils that, while much is being done to protect the rainforest, it is still under threat of destruction. Every minute an area the equivalent to 25 football pitches is being destroyed. This activity shows what will happen if we continue to destroy rainforest at this rate. Put pupils into groups of 4 or 5 and give them a set of ‘Life on Land: A World without Rainforest(this link will open in a new window)’ cards. They must sort the cards into 2 categories:

• ‘How forest clearance affects the people, plants and animals that live in the rainforest’
• ‘How forest clearance affects us all’

They should have 7 cards in the ‘How forest clearance affects us all’ pile. Now they must rank the 7 cards according to which issues they think are most important and which issues are least important. They can rank the cards with the 2 most important at the top and the 2 least important at the bottom. Groups can share their most important and least important issues and discuss their choices.

For more activities to explore climate change and climate justice with your class, see our resource on climate change and colonialism below.