During your eight serial days, you should gather this information, by observing, speaking to class teachers and other colleagues, interacting with learners, reading school policies, and any other appropriate activities.  You should consider and identify the most appropriate ways(s) to record this information.

• Mapping of school grounds/area.

• Evidence of existing engagement with sustainable education within the school such as garden area, recycling bins, litter picking ‘wardens’, bird boxes, and so on.

Children have different recycling bins at the classroom to different recycling materials.

There are different recycling bins at the canteen to separate recycling materials from the organic litter.

Every week one of the pupils is awarded for being the most involved in the environment.

There are posters in class promoting the sustainable environment and giving the advice to achieve it.

In the bathrooms, there are posters in which remind children stuff like turning off the tap when it is not necessary.

• Consideration of actual play space for children and its suitability.

The playground has a grass area where children can play and go around there

• Discussion with children on these aspects of sustainable education.

Every week children of different levels do a task in which they have to think and discuss between them about any issue and a couple of weeks ago they had to think about how the school could be improved to achieve a more sustainable development.

Children told me that some weeks they focus on the topic of sustainable development to learn more about it.

Children study it more in-depth in Science subject

Diversity is a range of different things exist around us. Everything/everybody is different from the rest because it has its own identity, characteristics and needs. It is what makes society be enriching because no every living is equal to other. Diversity can be explained in two different aspects, biodiversity and cultural diversity.

Biodiversity is the variety of life. It makes reference of nature where there is a diversity of varieties, species, habitats and ecosystems that exist around us. Scotland’s biodiversity is special because there are around 90.000 different species because of the variety of habitats and scenery. The causes of this may be explained by the weather, characterized by being a wet weather and a great range of geology and landforms, such as islands, mountains, plateaux, rivers… some symbols of Scottish culture are the eagle, deer, Scots Pine, red squirrel and more. Scotland is recognized by its clean air, clean water and wilderness areas, and for the biodiversity associated with these natural attributes. (Scottish Executive, 2004).

Biodiversity has an essential role in the world because it provides our food resources, medical discoveries and ecological services, because of this, every person must be taken care of it and collaborate to its conservation. It is important to explain that threats are caused mainly by human factors but they can be caused by natural factors as well, some of them are: residential and commercial development what affects natural spaces to promote tourism and create industrial areas; transport has a negative effects because of the construction of roads; biological resource use by collecting animals, gathering plants and harvesting tres; natural system modifications such as fire; pollution; climate change; geological events like volcanoes, tsunamis… Despite this, people may have an important role to promote its conservation. They can act in different ways to try to make disappear or at least reduce the biodiversity threats (Salafsky, N. et al., 2008) I think it is important to create awareness of this issue in schools to teach children that human being are not the only ones who live in the Earth, but there are more living beings and in fact they are crucial to our life and thus we have to conserve them as much as possible. It is essential to show children what is around them and the importance it has for us. It could be a good option to visit zoos with children to show them the different animals that exist, this is what teachers use to do, however, personally, it is not the best option. The best place to learn and understand what biodiversity is, is outdoors, in the forest or at the field, in this way children could make a connection between living beings and ecosystems and habitats. Outdoors, animals can be free, breathe fresh air and feed by themselves, what is known as the food chain, this is the most natural living process and what children should learn as biodiversity.

In relation to cultural diversity, is the whole of people who have different ethnic, race, skin colour, religion, sex, needs or sexual orientation. Different people, make an enrich society and everybody can learn from each other. Everybody has different characteristics, what makes people be different and unique in the world, however, sometimes society creates discrimination to them for being different from the rest. Racism is the discrimination to people who have different ethnic, race or skin colour, in spite of the fact a lot of years ago it existed in a higher level and nowadays the level of racism is lower, it still exists in society. The triracial system classifies traditional whites as the leaders, in the middle group of “honorary whites” and finally the “collective black” at the bottom. (Kim, Y. and Calzada, E. J., 2018). Nowadays, fortunately, my peers and young people understand in most of the cases that there’s no difference between races because all of us are people who have the same rights. For this, teachers haven’t to make difference between races, religions or skin colours because everybody is people who deserve respect and love. If an education promotes these values based on the respect, children won’t make exclusions in class or groups in the class according to the race, they will be nice with everybody and even they will feel proud of having a friend who is from a different country than his/hers. We have to remind that children will be what they learn in their education so it is essential to provide an education based on the respect above all.

The same occurs in terms of sexual orientation, people who have a different sexual orientation to heterosexual, such as bisexual and homosexual, suffer discrimination from society as well. It is the same problem as racism, years ago the homophobia was present every day, and nowadays although people started to accept it, there is still a lot of work to do to the complete acceptance. In the beginning, with the first homosexual rights movements in the late nineteenth century, there has been an effort to use scientific knowledge to emancipate homosexual men and women from legal punishment and medical treatment. (Minton, H. L., 2002) Despite this, I would like to highlight the evolution that society has made throughout years in relation to this issue because in early years punishment and treatments exist against this and now an open mind and acceptance from people exist. This is a poster that I found a couple weeks ago at the train, what promotes the respect for people who is homosexual and is an example of the evolution of society.

My peers, as the youngest people grew up being open minded because most of them know at least one person around them being homosexual and through their experience, they have realized any time how a person may feel if he/she is discriminated because of sexual orientation. They have lived this struggle in a closer way so they can empathize more with these people and understand them. Children will do as well if their parents participate in it. If teachers and parents teach children that love doesn’t have gender, they will understand it without any problem. They will understand love as a free feeling and even they will be able to feel and choose whatever the sexual orientation they want without any fear, unlike some years ago. They will learn that love is what really matters and not who you love.

According to generic skills, being analytical, critical thinker, collaborative and socially responsible is essential to achieve the aim of this issue. A teacher must analyse the situation in which society is to work on it, at the same time, critical thinking must be present in the class to develop thinking skills and learn from other thoughts as well, and finally, collaboration and responsibility are crucial to achieve the aim and improve what is not good enough yet. Children have to participate as a group team to reduce the problems still exist nowadays and learn that each action will have an effect. They will reflect on issues and what is around to have an analysis process.

In relation to the specific ones, the most important are:

2.1.1 Plan coherent, progressive teaching programmes which match their pupils’ needs and abilities, and justify what they teach.

2.1.2 Communicate effectively, using a variety of media, to stimulate pupils and achieve the objectives of lessons.

2.1.4 Set expectations and a pace of work which makes appropriate demands on all pupils.

2.1.5 Work effectively in co-operation with other professionals, staff and parents in order to promote learning

It essential to taking account the children needs and adapt the content for them, it is impossible to offer the same stuff for every child because they don’t have the same intellectual level either needs. On the contrary, children may feel undervalued and less skilled than others. Communication between teachers and pupils must be clear to have the main same message about what they have to work and learn, it is important using different resources to motivate them. The pace of work must be part of the learning process because this issue requires respect above all and responsibility to work. Children will feel that each participant is important and they are part of the working process. Finally, working with parents in a collaboratively way is essential to teach the values and skills must be provided in this issue. Work between parents and teachers must be related to each other to achieve the best results for the children. I am achieving these skills because a couple years ago I wasn’t aware of the importance the collaboration between teachers and parents, but throughout the last years, I have realized that is a crucial part of children education to achieve the best education as possible. Finally, these skills can be used in any other areas to have the best Maths or Language results if we collaborate with parents, use different media to motivate children and create a good atmosphere in class to make children work and help each other.

Scottish Executive. (2004) Scotland’s Biodiversity. It’s In Your Hands. [Moodle Resource] Available: Sustanaible Development. [Accessed 3 December 2018]

Salafsky, N. et al. (2008) A Standard Lexicon for Biodiversity Conservation: Unified Classifications of Threats and Actions. Conservation Biology. [Online] 22(4), 879-911. Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00937.x [Accessed 3 December 2018]

Kim, Y. and Calzada, E. J. (2018) Skin Color and Academic Achievement in Young, Latino Children: Impacts Across Gender and Ethnic Group. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. [Online] Available: http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=f529b7fb-fa80-4860-bafa-c23d5f731193%40sessionmgr4010 [Accessed 3 December 2018]

Minton, H. L. (2002) Departing from Deviance: A History of Homosexual Rights and Emancipatory Science in America. [Online] Available: http://chicago.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.7208/chicago/9780226304458.001.0001/upso-9780226530437

Climate change consist of the changes appear in the environment in different ways. These changes may occur because of natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, ocean circulation, however, the changes are caused at a higher level by human influence. During the last 100 years, the Earth’s surfaces have warmed up on average by about 0.6 ºC. To explain this, we have to make reference to the Greenhouse Effect what is the main cause of climate change. It consists of the fact The Sun emits solar radiation to the Earth’s Surface and the atmosphere acts like the glass in a greenhouse trapping some of the long-wave radiation. This process makes the temperature rise in the atmosphere as it does in the greenhouse and it makes possible the life in the Earth, on the contrary, it would be too cold and no life would be possible. Greenhouse Effect requires carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour to happen, it wouldn’t be possible without these gases. The problem occurs when the greenhouse effect is enhanced because of the increase in carbon dioxide produced by humans and the temperature is more than normal. That increase of carbon dioxide is because of processes like the burning of fossil fuels and forest clearing. (Buchdahl, J., 2002)

The Earth’s Greenhouse Effect (Buchdahl, J., 2002)

The main effect of Climate Change in the UK is climate change. It is important to clarify that climate and weather are different terms. Climate describes weather patterns recorded throughout the years and weather describes what we experience daily, like temperature and wind. Therefore, climate change leads to an increase in the average temperature between 0.9 and 2.4 ºC what means there will be more dry summers and less extreme cold winters. According to precipitations, they are expected to increase in most areas. Thus, it will exist extreme climatic conditions such as drought and storms. Apart from this, we can find effects in other areas, such as oceans where global warming will accelerate the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antartica and finally these areas will disappear. Ecosystems and biodiversity will be affected in terms that habitats will be degraded and fragmented and some species will be in extinction because they can’t live in different conditions they are used to do. (Buchdahl, J., 2002). Forest tree species are affected and it provides habitat for numerous plants and animals. Thus, loss of the three species will affect all the species that make up a complex forest ecosystem. The survival of species during the climate change will largely depend on their ability to migrate. (Hardy, J.T., 2003). Finally, climate change has effects on human health as well: respiratory diseases because of air pollution, increased the risk of cancer due to stratospheric ozone depletion and malnutrition… (Buchdahl, J., 2002)

It is important, as teachers, to explain to the children what the problem is, how and why it occurs and the effects it may have because they need to know and be aware of the importance of this. The issue must be explained seriously, because it is something that has negative effects in the world, through different media and strategies, making use of news that show the reality of climate change and let them know that is something real and not just something appears in films. Despite this, we have to be aware of they are children and it can’t be a dramatic explanation, we don’t intend to scare them, on the contrary, it must be just a serious issue taking account previous consequences around the world to know about it and learn the main reasons why climate change exists is because of human impact in a high level. After this, children will have knowledge about what climate change is and why it occurs, and finally that the reduction of it just depends on their behaviour and collaboration in their daily activities. My peers had information about it and since the beginning, we all already knew that human behaviour has an important effect on this without any doubt. For this, they were aware of the change of activities and actions people should do to reduce the climate change level, in spite of the changes people are making nowadays, we still have a lot of work to do.

Once we know some information about this issue, we would have to look for solutions in our daily life to reduce the emission of dioxide of carbon and thus the climate change. For this, we have to make reference to the main causes of climate change produced by humans, the following figure is an example of a typical everyday life greenhouse gas emissions.

GHG emissions in a small German city (after Brohmann, 2002) (Soyez, K. and GraBl, H.,2008)

Reducing climate change may sound something difficult to achieve but it is really easy through simple actions through personal activities. These actions can be divided into different categories: Turn down, in terms of programming thermostat temperature low at night, reducing the temperature of your home by just 1ºC; Switch off, to switch to green electricity or to switch off your air conditioner when you are not at home; Activity, to air dry clothes naturally instead of using a tumble dryer, to switch off lights when you don’t need them, to use the washing machine only when it’s full, to turn off the tap while brushing your teeth; Recycle, to use a reusable bag when you go shopping, to buy big bottles rather than small ones, recycle your waste; Walk, to consider public transport, bicycling or walking instead of car to travel by your own. (Soyez, K. and GraBl, H., 2008)

We can promote these simple actions in school and make them part of the daily routine of children. We could do this in the most possible fun way and make a pattern to not forget any of them. It would be nice to have a reminder in class with some actions they can do in class and share roles in which each of them has an action to do every day of the week and then the roles would rotate every day between them to do the different actions each one. This activity would consist of participating in the different categories previously explained. For example, one of them, in which children must switch off or turn off technologies stuff (computer, printer, TV, lights, heating, digital board) once they have been used and they have to be sure it is not electricity being wasted; another activity could consist of checking children are recycling their rubbish using the proper bills. We could promote as well the use of public transport to go to school or just walking. Apart from this, other actions don’t depend on the children, however, they can encourage their parents to do them. In this way, children will learn about the issue and they will be able to participate in it to improve the situation that it is present nowadays.

According to generic skills to be collaborative, critical thinker, analytical, knowledgeable, motivated and influential are part of this issue. This is because collaboration must exist to make possible a change of thoughts and interact each other, to be a critical thinker and analytical is essential because climate change is something makes you think about the impact your behaviour may have and about new actions may improve the situation. Knowledge is crucial to understand this topic and to be able to change actions in our daily routine and as well to promote it to children. It wouldn’t be possible to teach this if the teacher doesn’t know about what he/she is talking about. Finally, motivation and influence are key skills because to reduce climate change and improve your action you must be motivated to do it and think of it as a challenge. The teacher must be influential as well to teach children the importance of changing actions and above all to teach that actions in the children routine.

In relation with specific skills I would say that the more important ones are:

2.1.2 Communicate effectively, using a variety of media, to stimulate pupils and achieve the objectives of lessons.

2.1.3 Employ a range of teaching strategies and justify their approach.

2.1.5 Work effectively in co-operation with other professionals, staff and parents in order to promote learning

That is because as I explained before, communication and variety of media provide a better and effective learning for children. At the same time, the resources used in class must stimulate pupils and motivate to learn and work on the topic and finally achieve the objectives. Different strategies of teaching are required to provide a good learning process and working with parents to promote learning is really effective for children. This is because the content they are learning is not just implemented in schools but at home and in the daily routine as well, in this way children will remember the contents and they will be able to make use of it in their pattern. From my experience, the participation of parents on children learning is crucial because it provides motivation for them and a new learning process for them. They will feel even more comfortable and personally it will be more effective for them. It can be applied in other areas such as Language or Maths in which parents may be involved in the learning process of the children and use daily contexts to teach children new contents. I am achieving these at a high level because I know from my own experience that children learning is better if different strategies and resources are used and finally the results are worthy. However, parents collaboration and participation with teachers is essential to achieve it.

Buchdahl, J. (2002) Climate change. [Moodle Resource] Available: Sustanaible Development. [Accessed 02 December 2018]

Buchdahl, J. (2002) The Earth’s Greenhouse Effect. [Moodle Resource] Available: Sustanaible Development. [Accessed 02 December 2018]

Hardy, J.T. (2003) Climate Change. Causes, Effects and Solutions [Online] Available: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TKOhTRyFVIkC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=climate+change+causes&ots=DdyC97y74s&sig=cJJHMA489Yf-FiTJQtMjRrTnycg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false [Accessed 02 December 2018]

Soyez, K. and GraBl, H. (2008) GHG emissions in a small German city (after Brohmann, 2002). [Online] Available: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-211-78203-3.pdf [Accessed 02 December 2018]

Soyez, K. and GraBl, H. (2008) Climate Change and Technological Options. Basic facts, Evaluation and Practical Solutions. [Online] Available: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-211-78203-3.pdf [Accessed 02 December 2018]

The environment is everything around us. It consists of individuals, objects and elements influenced by the surrounding, thus it may be regarded as space where relationship and interactions between entities occur. People take care of it primarily because it furnishes us with resources. (Clayton, S. and Opotow, S., 2003) It is important to take care of it because, on the contrary, will appear facts such as contamination and global warm, what will affect our health and daily routine in future. Apart from this, it provides us and animals natural resources which make possible life on this planet so it is really important for us to maintain the environment the best as possible.

In relation to this, in class, we were outdoors to look for different plants and leaves. We visited the garden and the area around the uni because there is a lot of vegetation. We drew the shapes and the texture of the leaves, in consequence, we found different plants according to the size, the shape, the colour… we also put a paper above a trunk to draw its rugged texture. Thanks to this activity, we realized that it is possible to find several species of plants in a small area and it was really interesting to be able to touch them and appreciate the colours of them.

Then we went to class to observe snails in a box, we even could use a magnifying glass to see them closer and identify the parts of its body.

For me, it was very fun to know different plants that were around me at the same time it was possible to touch them. In this way, we could point out the parts of the plant and learn them. It is really interesting to have an outdoor space to learn contents because it is a place in where we are not costumed to do it. This broke the routine of learning in a classroom while we are listening to the teacher or reading stuff in the books, on the contrary, I think this promotes an autonomous learning for the children because they can learn by themselves using what is around them. Apart from this, it is as well a way of learning that catches the students/children attention and it is a more dynamical learning process because they can explore the natural environment. I am sure that children would have an effective learning because they would have fun in the garden. It is important to have different locations to learn because staying at the classroom all the time can be boring and a routine, thus they can know that it is possible to learn outdoors and they don’t relate the classroom as the only space to learn.
My peers had fun because we had photos and names of some plants, so we had to identify them at the garden by the colour, shapes and size. So the activity it was not only based on look plants but we had to look for some of them between different species and check if they were the same plant that we had on the photos. It was really interesting to learn different plants in that way because it was possible to interact with each other and share common ideas, so it promoted communication skills between them while they were learning.
It is essential to teach children to participate in the environment and made them aware of the impact that people has on it. “It is important to involve children in understanding and being to influence their own physical environment. We need children to become highly reflective, even critical participants in environmental issues in their own communities. We need them to think as well as act locally while also being aware of global issues.” (Satterthwaite, D. et al, 2014, p.6) For this, we as teachers could provide some activities or resources to let them participate in how to take care of the environment through simple actions. Different litters to different materials should be there in every class, children would learn that it is important to recycle and it would be easy to learn that the blue litter must be for paper, the green one for glass and the grey one for organic. Another activity could be planting a community garden where every child participates on planting herbs, fruit or vegetables, in this way children will learn how plants must be taken care.
According to generic skills in Primary teaching, being analytical, collaborative, socially responsible and motivated is part of this, because it is required to analyse the impact that people may have on the environment and the consequences that may exist after our actions. It is important to value actions we did before and change those which aren’t good to the environment. For this reason, we have to be responsible for our actions and behaviour and be aware of how can we act the best as possible. In this way, we have to think that every action it will have a consequence and it depends on us if that consequence is positive or negative. At the same time collaboration is crucial because it is needed to interact with people and act as a team to achieve the same objectives. Finally, motivation is part of this because we have the aim of maintaining the environment good so we have something to work on it and we can think of this as a challenge. Motivation requires an objective to achieve or a reason to act, on the contrary, we would act without aim and we weren’t too interested and motivated on it.
In relation to specific skills relevant, I think the most appropriate are the following ones.
2.1.2 Communicate effectively, using a variety of media, to stimulate pupils and achieve the objectives of lessons.
2.1.3 Employ a range of teaching strategies and justify their approach.
2.1.4 Set expectations and a pace of work which makes appropriate demands on all pupils.
They are important because stimulating pupils through different activities and media and using different teaching strategies makes an easier understanding for the children. At the same time, as I said before collaboration between children is required so it is necessary to have a good atmosphere in class to work to make possible a good communication and interaction and in this way they can improve the communication skills while they are learning. I think I am achieving in these in a high level because I was able to see the ease of learning using them and for the teacher it is fun as well to organize different activities and stuff to do to learn about any topic and personally, in my experience I saw how useful it is to promote learning activities in schools and makes children participate in the learning process. Experience is the best learning and I wouldn’t like to teach in such a boring way like my teachers did in my Primary Education class as a child. Despite this, it takes much more time to organize but I think finally it is worthy for children and teacher. Pace of work in the class is important because it promotes that every child in the class get on well each other and the teacher has to be sure they interact each other because sometimes children use to be with the same group of people and they don’t speak with other people in the class, so it must be there a pace of work within the whole class. We can use the skills in any area of learning, for example, we could use them in Maths class, in which they could work on things they use in their routine to make operations or go outside using outdoors things and they could work in groups, in this way they have to interact each other and think about the correct results as a team. It will improve the team working skills and the respect between every child.

Clayton, S. and Opotow, S. (eds.) Identity and the Natural Environment: They Psychological Signifance of Nature. [Online] Available: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Wwf0oVe2rHIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=identity+and+the+natural+environment&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiU8Y_szf7eAhU9UBUIHYIICZwQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=identity%20and%20the%20natural%20environment&f=false [Accessed: 1 December 2018]

Satterthwaite, D. et al. (2014). The environment for children. Understanding and acting on the environmental hazards that threaten children and their parents. [Online] Available: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cB1pAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=environment+for+children&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfz–o0P7eAhVpx4UKHTkWC6cQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=environment%20for%20children&f=false [Accessed: 1 December 2018]