3.2 Learning about sustainable habitats

A series of lessons designed to foster eco-literacy in children are given here as an example for the learning experience you are asked to design in Activity 6.3 that follows.

Objective: To foster eco-literacy through a transformative learning approach that encourages students to observe, reflect, and learn from their relationship with the environment, creatures and their different habitats.

UK Key Stage 2 (ages 7–11)

Learners may be introduced to the habitat concept through narratives of different creatures, their environment, and their needs. The principles of ecological design (Box 4) can help frame these activities.

Lesson 1 Observe different habitats of different creatures

  • Principle 1: Solutions grow from place –

    • Use the school grounds to observe and record different insects, birds and mammals.

    • Develop a shared storyboard of what you see and what you can research about the non-humans that share the playground.

    • Discover different habitats, patterns of hibernation and migration, and food sources.

    • Represent and collate information in drawings, photographs, role-play, stories and myths, and convene opportunities for small group working.

Lesson 2 Understand the design of sustainable habitat

  • Principle 3: Design with nature –

    • Explore different creature habitats and their locations.

    • Introduce contextual information about sustainable living and sustainable habitats.

    • Discuss how different habitats are constructed and why (e.g. in a high place or hidden under logs) and build an understanding of other things that might influence characteristics of habitat, for example:

        - protection

        - food sources

        - weather

        - temperature

        - wind

        - predators.

    • Think about how creatures’ habitats differ from our own. This helps learners to think about how different materials meet different needs and the importance of understanding local conditions.

Lesson 3 Co-creating your creature’s habitat: prototyping and storytelling ‘a day in the life of …’

  • Principle 4: Everyone is a designer –

    • If your creature was looking for a new habitat, how would you design and build it? Facilitate small groups to create ideas for a selected creature’s new home.

    • Use their research to support story boards and perhaps role-playing to understand what the creature’s needs are, and if they can be met in the design of a new home.

    • Explore different materials to co-create a creature’s habitat indicating key characteristics and features.

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Activity 6.3  Create an eco-literacy learning activity

Timing: Allow around 1 hour

This activity asks you to design an eco-literacy activity for adults or school-age learners to explore the theme of habitat in more critical ways and explore ideas of regenerative design and the circular patterns of resource flows practiced in nature. The idea is to clarify the contrast between the linear resource flows that make human ‘developed’ systems and infrastructures of place unsustainable and the circular patterns of resource flows in nature.

For example, ‘Principle 2: Ecological accounting informs design’ and ‘Principle 5: Make nature visible’, can be used to illustrate differences between creature habitat and our built environment that highlight the unsustainable consequences of linear and invisible resource flows in developing new structures and systems of service.

The structures of human-made buildings could be considered alongside the structures of creature habitats. Human-made structures often rely on global supply chains and creatures’ habitats always rely on local resources.

Energy and water systems of buildings are hidden (e.g. toilet waste or grey water waste are not generally visible, nor is the energy that goes into making things work) so this makes their value and impact on supporting us seem invisible, whereas creatures rely totally on their immediate habitat.

1.  Inspired by the five principles of ecological design, create a playful eco-literacy activity.

Think about what you want to achieve, the structure and focus of the activity and who the learner audience is, then decide which principles your activity will align with.

You can present the activity in a number of different ways, for example, as a:

  • list
  • map
  • storyboard
  • image.

We encourage you to consider which aspects of your activity align with a transformative learning approach.

2.  Present your activity idea in the Activity 6.3 forum discussion.

3.1 An ecological design approach

4 Summary of Unit 6