In this video, Arya, a seven-year-old girl, explains why Epping Forest is her favorite place and why trees and forests are so important for air quality.
Arya shares some ideas for what people can do to sustain forests and lessen human impacts on the natural world.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This sweet video provides a first-hand perspective of what a young child loves about the forest, how forests impact air quality, and what we need to do to save them.
Students will love hearing from someone their own age.
Additional Prerequisites
American students will need to know that petrol is gasoline.
Differentiation
Cross-curricular connections can be made in social studies classes that are working on geography and the importance of green spaces.
Language arts classes can pair this video with a fiction and nonfiction text on forests.
This video will help facilitate a great conversation with younger students about their favorite outdoor places. Teachers can ask students the following questions:
What makes the place so special?
Can you name some plants or animals that you have seen in your favorite place?
What steps can we take to make sure the place stays healthy?
The resource describes the need to protect the natural world, conserve the forests, biodiversity, and green spaces to improve air quality, and drawdown CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Arya's story will inspire young people to engage in environmental conservation. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
K-ESS3-3 Communicate solutions that will reduce the impact of humans on the land, water, air, and/or other living things in the local environment.
LS1: From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes
5-LS1-1 Support an argument that plants get the materials they need for growth chiefly from air and water.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.K-2 Identify ways to take action to help address local, regional, and global problems.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.4.3 Identify the reasons and evidence a speaker provides to support particular points.
