External Nature and Ecology Resources for Primary Schools

This page contains a list of external websites from UK organisations that provide reliable and useful resources for teaching nature and ecology topics at a primary school level.

• BBC Bitesize (Primary) : The BBC's free online study support resource. The Primary section contains a comprehensive collection of videos, guides, and quizzes that directly cover the primary science curriculum for living things and their habitats.

• British Ecological Society Education Resources : The British Ecological Society provides practical ecological lesson plans in collaboration with the Francis Crick Institute, guides to nurture pupils' interest in ecology, and projects like Connecting Schools to Nature, all tailored for primary school teachers to inspire curiosity about the natural world.

• Countryside Classroom : A partnership of organisations dedicated to helping children learn about food, farming, and the natural environment. The website is a portal to a vast range of resources, lesson plans, and activity ideas from across the UK.

• Earthwatch Green Earth Schools : Earthwatch's Green Earth Schools programme assists primary teachers with designing and installing nature features such as gardens and ponds in school grounds, alongside training and creative activities like LEGO redesign challenges to promote environmental stewardship and outdoor ecology learning.

• The Natural History Museum, London : A leading science research centre and museum. This 'Schools' page is the gateway to their classroom resources, virtual workshops, and information for planning school visits.

• RSPB Inspiring the Next Generation : The RSPB supplies activity sheets for primary school teachers, guiding the creation of wildlife habitats in school grounds through hands-on tasks like building bug homes, bird feeders, and mini ponds to connect children directly with nature and encourage conservation efforts.

• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew : A world-leading centre for plant science. The 'Learn' section on their website offers a range of high-quality resources, videos, and guides for primary schools on topics like plant parts, pollination, and adaptation.

• Wildlife Watch : This is the junior branch of The Wildlife Trusts. The website is specifically for younger audiences and includes activity sheets, wildlife guides, and inspiration for outdoor learning.

• The Woodland Trust : The UK's leading woodland conservation charity. This page has details on their free trees for schools programme and links to their learning resources, including tree identification guides and activity packs.

• Woodland Trust Outdoor Learning Resources : The Woodland Trust delivers engaging, free resources including Tree Tools for Schools with tree identification sheets, nature crafts, and KS2 assemblies on tree planting, helping primary teachers incorporate outdoor learning about trees, wildlife, and the environment into the curriculum.

• WWF UK School Resources : WWF offers free, curriculum-linked classroom resources such as the Happy by Nature pack, enabling primary school teachers to engage pupils in exploring environmental topics like rainforests, rivers, and climate change to foster a deeper understanding of ecology.

Other websites with an ecology focus

This page contains a list of external websites from UK organisations that provide reliable and useful resources for teaching nature and ecology topics at a primary school level.

• BBC Bitesize : The BBC's free online study support resource for school-age students. The Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 Science sections contain a comprehensive collection of videos, guides, and quizzes that directly cover the primary science curriculum for living things and their habitats.

• The National Trust : A charity caring for historic places and green spaces in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The 'Learning' section of their website provides resources and lesson plans on topics such as habitats, life cycles, and environmental change, often linked to their properties.

• The Natural History Museum, London : A leading science research centre and museum. Its 'Learn' section offers a wide variety of classroom resources, articles, and activities on topics including dinosaurs, evolution, classification, and the natural world.

• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew : A world-leading centre for plant science and conservation. The 'Learn' section on their website offers a range of high-quality resources, videos, and guides for primary schools on topics like plant parts, pollination, and adaptation.

• The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) : The UK's largest nature conservation charity, focusing on birds and the wider environment. The 'Fun & Learning' section provides games, activities, and curriculum-linked resources for schools, including the annual Big Schools' Birdwatch.

• The Wildlife Trusts : A federation of 46 local wildlife conservation charities. Their website offers a wealth of information on UK species and habitats. The 'Wildlife Watch' section is specifically for younger audiences and includes activity sheets, wildlife guides, and inspiration for outdoor learning.

• The Woodland Trust : The UK's leading woodland conservation charity. Their website has a dedicated learning section with free resources for schools, including tree identification guides, activity packs about woods and wildlife, and information on their free trees for schools programme.

• Wikipedia - List of Environmental Awareness Dates : A list of international environmental awareness days.

Other websites for creating and sharing knowledge freely

This page contains a list of external websites from organisations that provide platforms for collaboratively creating and sharing free knowledge resources.

• Wikimedia Foundation : The non-profit organisation behind the Wikimedia projects, dedicated to encouraging the creation, collection, and editing of free knowledge worldwide through open collaboration and volunteer efforts.
• Wikipedia : A multilingual online encyclopaedia created and maintained by a community of volunteers, offering freely accessible articles on a vast array of topics under a free licence for anyone to read, improve, or reuse.
• Wikimedia Commons : A media repository of freely usable files, including images, sound, and video, contributed by volunteers for use across Wikimedia projects and beyond, all released under open licences.
• Wikidata : A collaborative, editable knowledge base that provides structured data for factual information, powering queries and enhancing articles across Wikimedia sites with machine-readable content.
• Wiktionary : A collaborative project to produce a free-content multilingual dictionary, with definitions, etymologies, and translations crowdsourced from volunteers worldwide.
• Wikibooks : An open-content textbook platform where volunteers collaboratively author, edit, and publish educational books on diverse subjects, freely available for learning and adaptation.
• Wikisource : A digital library of free-content source texts, including books, historical documents, and legislation, transcribed and proofread by volunteers for public access.
• Wikinews : A free-content news source written in a wiki format, where citizen journalists collaboratively report, edit, and publish current events under open licences.
• OpenStreetMap : A collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world, with volunteers contributing geographic data for use in navigation, research, and humanitarian efforts.
• Project Gutenberg : A volunteer effort to digitise and archive cultural works, providing over 70,000 free e-books, primarily public domain texts, for global access and preservation.
• LibriVox : A community of volunteers recording public domain books into free audiobooks, making literature accessible to all through open-source releases for download and sharing.
• Khan Academy : A non-profit platform offering free online lessons, exercises, and videos on subjects from maths to history, created collaboratively to provide world-class education to anyone, anywhere.
• Europeana : A digital platform aggregating Europe's cultural heritage, where institutions and users contribute millions of items like books, images, and artefacts for free access and reuse under open conditions.

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