Step-by-Step Guide

An overview of the Explore: Urban Nature project and how students can submit their scientific questions.

Question Generation Activities

A series of 5-20 minute activities designed to encourage young people to develop scientific questions based on their own observations.

Scientific Questions Criteria

What makes a question scientific? Use this resource to find out!

Investigating and Improving Questions

A peer-review activity encouraging students to work in pairs to investigate and improve their initial questions.

What is Your Strongest Science Question?

A resource that can be used in combination with the Scientific Questions Criteria resource to identify and improve student’s strongest scientific question.

Hypothesis Stories

A class activity featuring interesting Urban Nature questions that have been previously asked. Great for inspiration and helping young people develop their own scientific questions further.

Step 1: Eco-Committee

Explore: Urban Nature is a perfect Eco-Committee meeting activity, that can be used to improve your Eco-Committee’s critical thinking (question 10d on the Eco-Schools Green Flag application form). Questions could focus directly on the impacts of the projects decided on in your Step 3: Action Plan.

Step 2: Environmental Review

Our Environmental Review encourages young people to add their own additional questions for each of the ten Eco-Schools topics. Take one of your additional questions and develop it into a scientific question to submit to the Natural History Museum. You could use submitted questions as evidence for question 3 on the ‘Bonus Educational Questions,’ section of the Eco-Schools Green Flag application.

Step 3: Action Plan

Use this activity to enrich the projects in your Action Plan, this activity links particularly well to our Biodiversity, School Grounds and Global Citizenship topics.

Step 4: Curriculum Links

This activity can be easily used as one of the three pieces of evidence required to complete the Curriculum Links section of the Eco-Schools Green Flag application – you can use our suggested format below:

‘Please give details of your first Curriculum Link starting with the Eco-Schools topic and subject area.’

Biodiversity/School Grounds/Global Citizenship & Science. We completed the Eco-Schools and Natural History Museum Explore Urban Nature project.

‘Provide a brief description of your first Curriculum Link.’

Insert examples of submitted questions in this field.

Step 5: Informing and Involving

By completing this activity you are supporting the important work of the Natural History Museum, so make sure to list them as an organisation you are working with on question 2 of the Informing and Involving section on the Eco-Schools Green Flag application.