FutureLearn have published a blog by Sylvia Knight, RMetS Head of Education. It’s an introduction to weather and climate, looking at weather forecasts, climate projections and the attribution of extreme weather events to global warming.
This relates to Come Rain or Shine, the free, 5-week weather and climate CPD course for secondary geography teachers (and others with an interest in UK weather) which is now running throughout the year.
Back in 2021 we released the Weather and Climate Teachers’ guide, accompanied by resources for the classroom and teacher CPD.
We are now happy to announce that the CPD ‘More For Teachers’ documents are now available as a series of short films on our YouTube channel.
The videos, like the guide, are aimed at secondary geography teachers to support the delivery of weather and climate lessons to 11–14+ year old students. They are not linked to any specific curriculum and should support teaching across all of the UK.
See the first video here:
RMetS have answered a call to make some KS2 SATs practice questions with weather and climate contexts.
These questions are taken directly from the last three years of SATs papers (specifically maths papers 2 and 3), with numbers changed to fit in with the updated context.
Context is wide ranging. Some questions refer to wildflowers, insects and grow-your-own vegetables to connect with young people’s love of nature and to empower them to act positively towards nature and our climate. Other more obvious connections include questions about the seasons, flooding, public transport and renewable energy.
Questions have been broken down into topic and are in PDF form, and available as Word documents (to make it easy to copy and paste) together with the answers for teachers (or students to self or peer mark).
The RMetS education team have written a guest blog for Geography Southwest. Geography Southwest is a project to promote geographical education in the South West of England and beyond by creating and offering a wide range of resources to support the wider geographical community.
Storm Bert: A case study navigating the truth about flooding in a changing climate details the lifetime of Storm Bert, which caused significant damage back in November 2024. In particular, flood damage caused by the River Taff (in Wales) bursting its banks, really highlighted the need to continue but also improve our adaptation methods.
In the blog we also address some of the misconceptions of how our weather here in the UK and weather further afield is changing. It is crucial that we understand what trends have been identified in our climate system by climate scientists, in order to develop and establish effective adaptation methods.
Make sure you follow the link at the bottom of the page to get the FULL blog!
We also recently wrote a careers article for Geography Southwest, exploring the term ‘green careers’, ‘green skills’ and available resource for students with an interest in a career in weather and climate, particularly with a geography background.
Make sure to scroll down to the button of the page to get the full article!
This report published by UCL is the outcome of an event held on 16 July 2024 which brought us and other professional and subject associations together to discuss the roles that they, and the subjects they represent, play in climate change and sustainability education in schools.
We’ve been delighted to work with Mastery Science to develop two new science teaching resources which are based on the climate and biodiversity stripes.
These visually striking images instantly convey information about changing global climate and biodiversity.
In the primary resource, students investigate the potential use of green walls to increase biodiversity on their school estate and adapt to climate change.
In the secondary resource, students prepare an (imaginary) submission for the Earthshot prize based on planting Kelp to mitigate climate change and increase biodiversity.
This week, the AQA exam board has published booklets for teachers of their Science, Geography, Maths, Religious Studies, Citizenship. Design and Technology and Psychology GCSE specifications, showing how the current specifications can be used to deliver the climate education that students are asking for and need to equip them with the green skills for the future workforce.
Building on the reports we published in 2023, the booklets exemplify how teachers can demonstrate to students that the skills and understanding that they are already being taught can be applied to the context of climate change, adaptation and mitigation, without increasing curriculum content or teaching load.
In science in particular, in work led by Natalie Vlachakis and supported by the RMetS, teachers are given ideas for how, through considerations of sequencing, to link learning across physics, biology and chemistry in order to deliver a cohesive and holistic climate education.
Join over 40,000 people who have taken our free, online award winning weather and climate CPD course designed specifically for secondary geography teachers and A level students, Come Rain or Shine, which starts again on 9th October.
This is an opportunity for anyone who has previously taken the course, or who has attended one of our in person weather and climate subject knowledge days, to access the resources again without cost.
The course is now spread over 5 weeks to maximise the free access period, and features updated and additional material.
The learning objectives for the course are:
The course focuses on UK weather (depressions, air masses, anticyclones) through a mix of videos, text, practical exercises and fieldwork, and also explores the wider global picture. It takes about 2 hours per week over 5 weeks.
Due to changes in the FutureLearn platform, participants only get free access to the resources for a few weeks. We therefore suggest that you only register yourself or your students for the course on the day you want to start accessing the materials.
The following resources have been assessed against the Quality Control framework , climate change content, and meet the criteria:
Engineering UK Climate schools programme resources
Educake questions
Twinkl Climate change CPD.
SOS-UK Teach the Teacher presentation
Twinkl Eco Adventurers scheme, Earth’s Climate & Cycles resources for EYFS – Year 6.
AQA Climate Change and Sustainability in GCSE science
Common Seas Education/ Plastic Clever schools secondary resources
Engineering UK Tackling Climate Change
Royal Meteorological Society with Dr Frost Learning
Secondary Maths Resources
National Education Nature Park
What is the Anthropocene?
Climate change: making change
Climate change and mental health
Carbon cycle passport
Making change
Royal Meteorological Society with the Royal Geographical Society
Resources based on the 2021/ 2022 IPCC report for A level and GCSE geography
Royal Meteorological Society with the Young People’s Trust for the Environment
Heatwaves
Royal Meteorological Society with Mathematics Education Innovation (MEI)
Maths Climate Change Resources
Climate change concept association tool
Carbon dioxide – seasonal cycles
Weather and Climate: a Teachers’ Guide
Royal Meteorological Society/ National Education Nature Park
Agree or disagree
UK Climate
The great debate
Greenhouse effect bulldog
Met Office/ National Education Nature Park
Exploring climate change data
Interpreting climate change models
Climate change P4C activities
Emotion line graphs
Royal Geographical Society/ National Education Nature Park
What is the difference between weather and climate?
Why is our climate like this?
Can climate change?
What will climate be in the future?
Does it matter if climate changes?
Royal Society/ National Education Nature Park
What do you want to know about climate change?
Thoughtbox/ National Education Nature Park
Changing climates
Changing climate cause and effects
Be the change
Phet/ National Education Nature Park
Greenhouse effect
Eden Project/ National Education Nature Park
Climate response
WWT/ National Education Nature Park
Climate champions
UCAR/ National Education Nature Park
Project drawdown
The Quality Control framework was developed as part of the National Climate Education Action Plan and in partnership with other organisations.
Maths is at the centre of all things science, and climate change is no different. To understand climate change, scientists have measured many climatic and weather variables such as temperature, rainfall accumulations, pressure and atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Mathematical skills allow us to explore these observations, finding trends and looking at the statistics. Maths allows us to create equations that allow us to work out what will happen in the future, be it the weather for the weekend or predicting the future climate in 50 years. Maths also helps us to unpick the social science of climate change.
Solving climate change needs brainy mathematicians!
Challenge:
As part of Maths Week Scotland we are challenging secondary students in Scotland to explore the broad topic of climate change and the many possible links it has to mathematics by writing their own maths problems and questions.
This challenge will be split into two sections: writing questions and peer reviewing questions from another group/class.
Part 1: Writing questions
The Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS) has recently released the Climate Change Concept Association Tool which brings together more than three hundred climate change concepts in an engaging illustration of how they are linked.
Climate change is linked to 3 main terms – causes, policy and impacts. We are going to focus on causes and impacts.
We suggest splitting the two topics into 2 days; writing questions for causes on Monday 23rd September and impacts on Tuesday 24th September. However, the competition will be live before Scottish Maths Week so you can deliver the question making sessions when it best suits your teaching pattern.
The questions must be linked to each of the topics associated with the ‘causes’ and ‘impacts’ of climate change. The questions should be set at National 4/ 5 level in terms of mathematical skills and style.
Click below to see an example question if the topic set was ‘climate action’.
There are 8 topics associated with CAUSES (Monday):
There are 24 further topics associated IMPACTS (Tuesday).
However, we are going to focus on the 10 terms in bold for the questions:
We advise breaking the class into small groups (of no more than 3) and tasking each group with a couple of topics each. You will need to keep track of who worked on which questions, as there are prizes on offer – however, please don’t tell us the students’ names. For the terms that need more explanation, there is also a glossary on our website.
Part 2: Peer reviewing
You will then be given the opportunity to contribute to the reviewing process for the competition. You will score the questions written by another team/school against a number of criteria provided in the score card (which can be accessed on the competition hub). This peer reviewing process will be kept anonymous. Your peer review scores will then be combined with the expert review, undertaken by the RMetS education team and supported by Dr Frost Learning. The expert review will also include the plagiarism checks.
You will receive an email from education@rmets.org by the morning of Thursday 26th September with your assigned questions for reviewing. You will then have until Friday 4th October to complete the reviewing process. We suggest that either the whole class does all the questions and scores each question together, or similarly to the creating process, you split the class into smaller groups to focus on just a few of the questions.
The scores must then be filled in on the score card. Again, please make sure that the form is sent by a teacher or adult on behalf of the group or entrant. Return to education@rmets.org by 11pm Friday 4th October.
Prizes:
18 prizes are on offer – a £5 Amazon voucher per student for the best question written in each topic (up to £15 per group). We will contact you, the teacher/guardian, if one of your questions has won. It is then your responsibility to pass the prize on to the correct group of students who wrote the winning question.
In addition to this, each school/class which submits an entry for all 18 linked questions will be awarded with a certificate.
Future use of questions:
RMetS will add the winning questions from each topic and any other suitable questions to the bank of resources that exist on our education platform, MetLink (similar to the question provided as an example earlier in this document). The questions will be uploaded anonymously to the website, referencing that the questions were created through the Climate Calculations Challenge in collaboration Dr Frost Learning, and supported by Maths Week Scotland.
All documents for the Climate Calculations Challenge, including presentations slides and entry forms, can be found on the challenges page of the Maths Week Scotland website.
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