For this Fairtrade Fortnight (27th February to 12th March), Thousands of people across Britain are gearing up to take part in Fairtrade Fortnight 2023. This year’s campaign will highlight the message that whatever your budget and wherever you shop when you choose Fairtrade, you support farmers to take care of the environment through Fairtrade’s Prices, Premiums and Programmes.
This year it will focus on the climate crisis and the increasing threat it poses to some of the planet’s most beloved food products as well as the livelihoods of the farmers and agricultural workers who grow them. It will show how the future survival of the world’s most popular foods – such as bananas, cocoa, and coffee – hangs in the balance unless we achieve inclusive and equitable climate solutions, with farmers and agricultural workers playing a central role in the climate response.
If you’re new to the topic of Fairtrade and the climate, check out the ‘Climate, Fairtrade and You' topic packs. They are full of assemblies, lesson plans and activities to help your students learn about climate change and its impacts on farmers around the world.
Visit their free teaching resource library to access a range of lesson plans, assembly plans, films, activities and games. Our teaching tools are designed to support learning about Fairtrade and global issues at all key stages and levels, from nursery through to secondary school.
If you want to take your learning a step further, check out the film and lesson series ‘A Fair Future’. Through this series, your students will learn why trade justice is necessary for climate justice, and how we can all take action for a fairer future.
It’s never too early to start learning about Fairtrade! EYFS can join in the fun with a new Comic and Activity Pack, co-produced with EarthCubs. Join Gigi the Giraffe in Kenya to find out where coffee comes from!
Read on to find out about how LGfL's teaching and learning resources can help your students explore fairtrade and climate change over the Fairtrade fortnight event and use the theme to support writing for a purpose.
First, let's look at a clip from LGfL TV exploring why using themes like climate change are important:
Writing for a purpose provides the students with an audience and therefore a real purpose to write. Knowing their work would be shared outside of a book or class, that their work will be read and seen by different people adds a real incentive to create a high standard of work, so go start your campaign but it’s a great one to start.
Lee Parkinson aka @ICT_MrP in his keynote speech at our LGfL conference in 2018 (yes it was that long ago!) shared how powerful it was to explore the idea of using themes such as climate or environmental issues to foster engagement and create and inspire students to start campaigning and how it can be used to increase the scale of aspiration, audience and outcomes for all learners.
In this section of his keynote above, (watch here for the full-length video) Mr P speaks of the 3 key points to encourage writing:
-Use an exciting stimulus
-Don’t leave writing useless on a page
-Let them write for the world
Mr P also mentions Ron Berger’s Hierarchy of Audience, the idea that introducing an authentic audience changes the perception of the work for the student and this affects the amount of effort they put into the final outcome.
The Busy Things platform offers writing activities via its fantastic range of digital templates, all of which will support your students in exploring this event. First, ask your students to demonstrate their knowledge of Global warming with this template, Explore climate change by creating your own deforestation scene and write about it by using the text and picture tools with this template here. Or use the picture and text tools to write about the future of our rainforests with this template or how about writing a piece about how climate change affects the weather? There is also a range of interactive maps to look at food origins.
Busy Things have also worked with The Climate Coalition to develop a new collection of games and activities to make learning about climate change interactive and memorable for primary school children.
World climate zones - An interactive labelling activity to help children understand the hot and cold regions of the world - how might climate change affect them?
Global habitats - What animals live where? Use this activity to help understand the characteristics of different habitats and how they might be affected by climate change.
Polar regions - Ready-made templates for children to write about the polar ice caps and the effect of global warming. Create Arctic/Antarctic fact files, create an Arctic/Antarctic scene plus interactive activities for labelling an Arctic habitat and sorting animals that live in the polar regions.
The Rainforest - Explore the rainforests of the world using our interactive labelling activity, and use our ready-made templates to write about and illustrate their understanding of the rainforest climate and habitat, its deforestation and the rainforests of the future.
Tree World! - this game simulates a planet inhabited by Beeples, flora and fauna - can they live together in harmony? Children can experiment to see what happens when the carbon balance goes wrong! We challenge them to try to avoid a climate disaster and save the planet!
Poster-making activities and a game suitable for children aged 5 to 7, Using these activities, young children can create a variety of posters campaigning against the pollution of our planet. Each poster activity comes with guidance that the teacher can use to explain to the children some key concepts to think about when doing their work.
Also within Busy Publisher why not get your students to use the postcard/letter template, you could get your students to design, make and send postcards/letters to local shops which might not stock many Fairtrade products encourage them to do so, or perhaps send a postcard to a local MP about a local climate issue or students could use a newspaper template to create their own newspapers headlines or campaign leaflets to hand out to raise awareness of the topic. Just type in the keyword Climate Change with the search function to see all of the resources available to you in the Busy Things platform.
Students could also use the award-winning range of digital tools found within the just 2easy tool suite, why not ask your students to write persuasive letters or design posters explaining why using fairtrade products make a real difference, or explore a local climate issue such as air pollution?
You can also get your students to create their own animations focusing on climate change using the jit5 animate app, using their own drawing or using clipart, remember you use the microphone to add audio to your animations)
Growing up around the world aims to help children in the UK understand the realities of childhood in different contexts and follows the lives of 11 children in 10 different countries for more than 20 years in the wake of the Rio Earth Summit. The films in this resource provide a unique insight into growing up around the world; the challenges, hopes and dreams of these children.
They also show how the world around them has changed and the impact that this has had, it also has a fantastic page which offers tips on how children can take action and some suggestions to get children started, here are just a few examples:
-Write a blog
-Organise an event
-Write to decision-makers and influential people
-Organise a debate – invite people (parents, community, etc.) to be an audience. Choose an issue you are passionate about and research it. Prepare arguments for and against. Remember that the issue you are debating could be controversial or personal for some people so be sensitive to other people’s opinions and feelings.
-Make a film
-Design posters
-Make a calendar – highlighting issues each month raises awareness and you could also sell your calendar to raise funds
-Hand out leaflets
-Make a comic book
=Create a magazine or newspaper on the issue
Designed for use in Citizenship, PSHE or Geography lessons, the videos introduce Key Stages 2, 3and 4 pupils to human rights, building an understanding of the issues facing people around the world. The resources come with a comprehensive teacher pack with full lesson plans, starter activities, sample worksheets, a dictionary of key terms and tips for expanding on the material provided in the resource.
You may also want to seek out ideas from our Amplify resource, The project will be powered by themes (six initially) with examples of how they can be explored. Teachers can use these themes and examples within their school community to inspire students to creativity using LGfL premium digital tools (Adobe Creative Cloud, the Just2easy ToolSuite and Busy Things); creating pieces of media which, once completed will be amplified by LGfL by hosting it on this website. The aim is to amplify the student’s stories and provide legacy resources to be revisited throughout the year and beyond.
The goal of Amplify is to support creative activities that promote critical reflection and honest conversation within school communities, enabling all members (whatever their age) to engage with issues that matter to them. Often issues in wider society such as racism, xenophobia, and intolerance can have a profoundly negative impact on students’ everyday experience both in and out of school. It is more important than ever to listen to, and elevate the positive student voices, experiences, and histories of our diverse communities.
For even more support with climate change or ecology activities, Adobe offers the Save the Ocean: Creative Climate Change Activity Project these downloadable educational resources supply educators with everything they need to write their own poetry assignments, and lesson plans, and exercise the included files from Adobe’s free resources.
Adobe in partnership with Sky Media has also launched Sky Up/ The Edit, Sky and Adobe’s initiative to develop creativity and inspire the next generation of talent in film and TV. Young people’s voices and views should be heard. The Edit is a digital storytelling challenge that gives young people aged 8-18 the chance to create a 90-second news report on topics that matte
Communication, problem-solving, critical thinking – they’ll learn it all as they work together to create their news report, using Sky footage and Adobe video editing tools. Students will be introduced to roles within the creative and media industries, with the opportunity to develop their key media literacy and digital skills. The Edit is the perfect programme for lesson time and enrichment clubs and can be delivered in as little as three hours. Ready-to-teach curriculum-linked resources for ages 8-18 with topics on Climate Change, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, and Well-being.Including student tutorials, PowerPoints, topic factsheets, and a report planner. The classroom toolkit will walk you and your students through the process of planning and making a report, from the brief to scripting, filming and editing.
Register now for this fantastic digital storytelling challenge, perfect for media and English studies, and a great way to improve the well-being of your learners – with a ‘direct to student’ offering and streamlined resources to better support educators teaching The Edit remotely.
If you have iPad within your school, then you may want to search up The #CreateforaCause book series, created by a group of Apple Distinguished Educators who place creativity at the heart of awareness and fundraising. the vision is simple. The team are passionate about nurturing creativity in the classroom and exploring global themes to inform, educate and have a lasting impact. The books are designed to give you the opportunity to develop your skills in drawing, photography, video, music and augmented reality and also that you will use those skills to make a difference in your local area.
Whatever you have planned for Fairtrade fortnight please do remember to share your student's work via our Twitter or Facebook pages and use the event’s hashtag #fairtradefortnight. We will help share your student’s work with a greater audience.