Urban Nature Project - for schools

Be supported towards a mini exhibition of your own in the museum, including a launch visit, resources to borrow for work back at school, then a visit to install your display.

Download a full information pack here.

The activities involved in this pathway include:

Launch visit:

• Take part in a workshop to explore urban nature in our grounds
  • Introduction to classifying and surveying skills and equipment
• Some time to explore the museum more widely.

Back at school:

• Use surveying and classification resources to investigate how green your school grounds and/or local area are.
  • Supported by various resources: including classification keys, bug pots, quadrats, sweep nets.
• Practice mapping skills by considering what is missing about urban nature from typical street maps and OS maps.
  • Annotate maps with acetates to show where urban nature is. 
  • This can be differentiated to various levels: e.g. marking a good place for a minibeast hunt, to using surveying results to map the distribution of insects.
• Get creative and make mini art installations in the style of Sydney-based artist Michael Pederson
  • Resources provided e.g. pre-made signs, panels and markers to make your own, miniature people, objects and signs.

Free CPD and outreach: CPD in May, outreach on Monday 3 June 2024.

Download a full information pack here.

Free teacher CPD with the Great North Museum: Hancock as part of Explore: Urban Nature, a national project to engage with the nature around us in towns and cities. Gain skills and confidence to support your pupils as they find out about the wildlife living in the school grounds. We can offer this to a full school staff, a range of teachers from a trust or other groups at a time that works for you. We need a minimum of 5 teachers to run a session. The project is aimed at pupils from KS2 and KS3 and is very suitable for special schools or alternative settings as well as mainstream.

- Share and overcome your worries about working outside

- Try out different survey techniques and ways of engaging pupils

- Integrate working scientifically, try out some citizen science, try out nature art

- Learn to use apps and spotter sheets to support identification

- Find out about local organisations who can support your work

- Find out about equipment which you can borrow from the museum to use in school

The teacher CPD can be followed up with free outreach to your school on Monday 3 June 2024, where we can support you and your pupils to investigate the urban nature on your site. We can loan you equipment to support your work.