In 2017, Chester Zoo launched its Sing for Songbirds campaign, which aims to raise awareness of Indonesia’s beautiful and rare birds that are being captured from the wild to be sold on markets as part of the illegal wildlife trade. This trade is pushing many bird species closer to extinction.
Headteacher Andy Moor had always been passionate about exciting topics that brighten the curriculum, but nothing prepared him for the huge effect the threat to Indonesian songbirds had on his pupils.
“The plight of these rare birds facing extinction took over the school. We were all completely immersed. This was something real and the impact on the children’s learning was phenomenal,” says Moor, who is head at St Bernard’s RC primary school.
In collaboration with Chester Zoo, teachers designed lessons centred on the fate of the birds, which are trapped and captured from the wild and sold in markets. They then brought it closer to home with a focus on caring for the UK’s wild birds and their habitat. “It took cross-curricular design to a whole new level and opened up incredible possibilities to move the children from interest and engagement to passion and obsession,” he says.
“In a world where we have so many targets to meet in schools we can sometimes miss a trick. This work with Chester Zoo was an opportunity to refocus, to rethink what we want our children to learn and how we can best do it,” he adds.
The school’s Sing for Songbirds project was “miles away from the woolly topic-based approach” that took hold in the 70s and 80s, he says, because the zoo staff worked with teams of teachers and subject experts to link its educational materials directly to the national curriculum.
“With all the pressures on schools nowadays, some schools are tempted to deliver the same, safe “flatpack” curriculum each year. Schools have a great opportunity to do so much more than this and engage their community in the process,” Moor says. “Ofsted have recognised the importance of this on the curriculum, which is something that I welcome.”
Education is central to Chester Zoo, founded in the 1930s as Britain’s first “zoo without bars”, with a mission to conserve and protect wildlife. Charlotte Smith, the zoo’s head of discovery and learning, says that education is core to how the zoo achieves its conservation mission.
“Equipping the next generation to take on the conservation challenge is really important, but it is also important to schools that they can map it to what they are teaching in the curriculum. We can deliver on curriculum outcomes and we can make it real as well.”
She explains that when pupils see the animals and meet the experts who have just come back from the rainforest or the bird markets and hear their stories, the curriculum comes to life: “It’s not just something they do in the classroom, but something happening in the world around them, here and now.”
From placing bird feeders in the playground to staging demonstrations in the local shopping centre, the St Bernard’s pupils threw themselves into the campaign, and it took over their school life. In English the children wrote letters and leaflets and conducted debates. In geography they located the places where the birds live and learned about different cultures. In science they looked at classification and animal behaviour, and built songbird lanterns while learning about electric currents. They studied the history of Chester Zoo, wrote poems, composed and performed songs, painted posters and made origami birds, animations and videos. The three months culminated in a huge exhibition in the school hall, open to parents and the public.
The project is now being expanded to 30 other schools in the area. Teachers are designing and sharing lesson plans around Chester Zoo’s Sing for Songbirds campaign and some of the zoo’s other conservation campaigns, such as the case for sustainable palm oil to preserve natural forest habitats and the illegal wildlife trade.
Zoo staff are impressed with the St Bernard’s schoolchildren and their thoughtful grasp of the issues. Willow, nine, wonders whether people in one country have the right to tell those in other countries how to behave: “We wouldn’t want people in Indonesia to tell us we couldn’t have Halloween or turkeys for Christmas. They could ask why we can kill and eat turkeys when they’re not allowed songbirds. The difference is that we let turkeys breed, so they don’t go extinct.”
Charlotte, 10, points out that the birds don’t breed in market cages and their average life span is just two or three weeks; and Elisha, 11, believes you can’t force people in another country to stop keeping birds, but you can educate them about the problem. “In our English lesson we wrote to an Indonesian boy. We told him about the jungles becoming quiet and why it would be better if he released the bird,” she said.
Above all, their passion for the cause has given the children a new confidence. “We are definitely making a difference,” says Willow. “People may underestimate us, just because we are children, and think we can’t change anything, but we have proved that, actually, anyone can do anything they want.”
Discover how Chester Zoo can help you bring learning to life at chesterzoo.org/learning
