What is the future of our countryside?

Summary:

Students are given the opportunity to represent different members of the rural community and to understand how and why the countryside might change in the future. They are encouraged to collect information from the Museum of English Rural Life to support what they feel is the future for their character and the effect it might have on them, other people and the wider countryside.

Themes and topics:

• Environmental change
• Interactions and interdependencies
• Ecosystems
• Evolution, inheritance and variation
• Challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to present day
• Types of settlement and land use
• Economic activity
• Population and urbanisation
• Use of natural resources
• Human and physical processes interact to influence, and change to landscapes, environments and the climate.

Suggested age range:

Upper primary, lower and upper secondary

Links with other activities: 

This activity could also be used in conjunction with the ‘Where have all our songbirds gone?’ and ‘What was farming like before modern technology?’ resources.

Learning outcomes:

By the end of this set of activities students will:

• be better informed about the factors that will influence how the countryside changes in the future and how this will affect people’s lives
• work effectively as a team and be more confident to deliver a verbal argument to an audience based on evidence and researched information
• be more aware of how the countryside could change in the future and what this might mean for them
• have worked as a team to summarise information and compare evidence.