During this lesson students reflect on the way they view and use trees, and how nature can be used in poetry to express ideas and convey messages about conservation. They begin by taking a walk around the school yard, then read Shel Silverstein’s book The Giving Tree. As a class they brainstorm verbs, nouns and adjectives from nature, and use these to independently write a Diamond Poem about trees to share with a chosen audience. This lesson is designed to be taught outside. By spending time outdoors and connecting to nature, students are more likely to care for and conserve nature as adults.

Students are introduced to the topic of energy by analysing research articles and creating a Wordle cloud. Wordle is a free word art tool that crunches any chunk of text and produces a visual representation of the content. The resulting word cloud emphasises the most common words by amplifying their size based on frequency. Students will develop knowledge of subject-specific vocabulary and use this knowledge to create an energy limerick.

In this lesson students explore the concept of biodiversity. They begin by working in groups to conduct research in order to investigate a topic relating to ecosystem diversity, species diversity and genetic diversity. Then they work in new groups to create a communication product that explains the importance of biodiversity.