Transforming Teaching With Nature: Indoors and Outdoors

Teach outdoors with ZSL conservation tools

How can you bring meaningful outdoor learning into your teaching without overwhelming preparation? Primary teachers need practical tools and confidence to deliver nature-connected learning that engages pupils and supports curriculum goals.

This four-week course, developed with ZSL conservation expertise, provides a comprehensive nature teaching toolkit. You’ll explore outdoor learning, biodiversity basics, school grounds activities and curriculum connections through real-world conservation case studies.

Through downloadable resources and practical activities, you’ll develop confidence in teaching with nature.

Understand foundations of outdoor learning and biodiversity

Explore the benefits of learning outside the classroom for pupil engagement, wellbeing, and nature connectedness. You’ll learn biodiversity essentials: species, ecosystems, habitats and how to discover these using your school grounds.

Through ZSL’s conservation stories, you’ll gain inspirational examples to bring hope-filled science into primary teaching.

Plan outdoor lessons and ensure safety

Learn comprehensive risk assessment, site evaluation, and inclusive outdoor teaching preparation. You’ll explore practical projects like ZSL Hogwatch to find wildlife where you teach.

You’ll build teacher confidence for regular outdoor learning whilst maintaining safety standards.

Connect curriculum and communicate climate issues

Map outdoor activities across maths, science, English, and art whilst addressing climate change and eco-anxiety constructively. You’ll access downloadable lesson plans, activity sheets, quizzes, and video resources.

You’ll design personalised outdoor schemes of work and gain science capital insights and conservation career inspiration for pupils.

This course is ideal for primary school teachers wanting practical outdoor teaching confidence, ZSL resources, and strategies for climate and biodiversity education, especially busy educators seeking asynchronous professional development.

This course is ideal for primary school teachers wanting practical outdoor teaching confidence, ZSL resources, and strategies for climate and biodiversity education, especially busy educators seeking asynchronous professional development.

• Explain the benefits of teaching and learning outside, and successfully implement ways of doing this with primary classes
• Design and amend lessons to incorporate conservation and nature examples, with an increased understanding of biodiversity and climate change
• Identify the positive impacts of at least one outdoor lesson on students
• Demonstrate a significant increase in confidence to deliver lessons outdoors
• Report (after 2 months) an increase in how often teaching has been taken outside, and in nature