David Attenborough: Breaking Boundaries - The Science of Our Planet Worksheets

This resource consists of two comprehensive worksheets to accompany the David Attenborough Netflix Documentary - Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet.

Worksheet 1 (With questions) - This 8-page worksheet, includes over 100 questions for students to answer while watching the documentary. The questions are categorised based on the nine planetary boundaries identified by scientist Yohan Rockstrom. Alongside each question (and each category) includes the exact timing of the documentary where these questions (and this category) is being addressed.

Worksheet 2 (Independent version) - This 5-page worksheet differs from Worksheet 1. While it still has the same structure of categories, it has a massive reduction in the number of questions. Here, the focus is for students to watch the documentary and take their own notes on what they feel is important with each of the nine boundaries.

Tip on using the worksheet: The worksheet has a total of 14 categories (one for each of the nine boundaries, and 5 others including an ‘Introduction’ at the start and ‘Hope for the Future’ at the end). Because the timings of each category are included, I recommended pausing the documentary after each category for 5/10 minutes. During this time, it’s fun for students to conduct a ‘scavenger hunt’ type quest to share answers/notes with others, and build on their own worksheet. This will mean the total student ‘experience’ for this documentary could be up to 3 lessons & it is a great activity to build student aware

Overview of the documentary:
In the documentary, David Attenborough and scientist Yohan Rockstrom examine the science of our planetary decline, setting out in unflinching detail the extent of Earth’s degradation – and the catastrophic consequences of anything but drastic action.
In 2009, Rockström identified nine natural processes upon which all life on Earth depends, and the limits within each that cannot be exceeded without endangering humanity. This documentary examines these nine boundaries and also outlines what changes we must make immediately, to combat the problems faced. The nine boundaries are as follows:
Climate Change
Biomes/Forest loss
Biodiversity
Freshwater/Hydrological Cycle
Flow of Nutrients - Nitrogen & Phosphorous Cycles
Oceans/Ocean Acidification
Novel Entities (Human-made pollutants)
Air Pollution
Ozone Layer
It is different to Attenborough’s usual documentaries in the sense that the focus here is on science, education and facts more so than the amazing scenes of wildlife which we have become accustomed to with Attenborough.

There is potential here to extend this further - following on from this activity, students can be placed into small groups and each assigned one of the nine planetary boundaries. They could produce presentations on each where they address the problems and offer innovative solutions to their selected/chosen problem based on research!