Why not create a fun Clean Air Route Map for your school this Clean Air Day, and help pupils to breathe cleaner air every day?
A simple way to reduce the amount of pollution children breathe in is to choose quieter, low pollution routes to get to school, rather than busy roads with lots of pollution.
But how do you know which roads to choose?
For Clean Air Day this year (17th June 2021), schools can use the resources in our mapping toolkit to create a Clean Air Route map of the area for pupils, by pupils. This fun, cross-curricular mapping project is ideal for a KS2 or KS3 class.
On Clean Air Day, the pupils could have a lesson on pollution (lesson video and Powerpoint are included in the resources), then look at a pollution map of the area and identify clean air routes (which we can send to you), and then work together to create a fun map of the area showing clean air routes to the school, and with pictures of all the pupils favourite places in the area.
Once the map has been created, it can be made into a banner for the school gates, or printed so families can put them up on their fridge or noticeboard at home, as a constant reminder of these vital messages.
​What to do now
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Download the toolkit
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Email lucy@coolworldconsulting.co.uk to request a pollution map of the area around your school.
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Share images of your activities, if permissions allow, on twitter with @clean_air_kids and #cleanairday
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Send us your finished map and we can display it on our website.
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Find out more about Clean Air Day at: https://www.cleanairday.org.uk/about-clean-air-day
Video lesson
Our new home school pollution lesson is made up of a:
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Recorded online video that can be slotted into homeschooling (20 minutes)
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Instructions for an activity which pupils can undertake independently (15-20 minutes).
Learning outcomes:
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Pupils will understand what pollution is and what creates pollution.
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Pupils will know why it is especially important for children to breathe clean air.
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Pupils will have learned 3 ways they can reduce the amount of pollution they breathe in their day-to-day lives.
Output:
Pupils will be encouraged to undertake an independent activity, building on their learning from the video. They can either:
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Create a poster for their school
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Make a video to share with parents, or
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Write a letter to a politician (local MP or local Mayor).
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The video can be downloaded as part of the 'Raising Awareness' toolkit.
Cleaner Air Sooner and Client Earth talk about how schools can get started on cleaner air for their school.
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Hear Lucy Harbor from Cleaner Air Sooner talk about:
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Why does school pollution matter? (2:17)
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Intro to the Cleaner Air Sooner programme - quick wins and bigger projects (3:28)
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Ideal first project - Raising Awareness.(5:12)
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Other toolkits and how to sign up (15:55).
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Hear from Parent Tom Knowles about:
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How parents at his school and PTA began to look at air pollution (19:10).
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Finding out pollution data (20:20) and thinking about sources.
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Monitoring pollution at the school and raising awareness (21:45).
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Hear from Catherine at Client Earth about:
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Tips for how to influence your elected representatives when asking for cleaner air for your school (34:04).
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Suggested letter structure (38:21).
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Other tools (41:40).
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This briefing, conducted by ethical data research company, Signify, for the Cleaner Air Sooner programme, consists of desk research and a machine learning analysis of social media. It identifies the features, content and elements that led some environmental projects based in schools to have huge impact in their communities.