Beavers have been reintroduced to Dorset, in southwest England, following an absence of around 400 years.
This resources pack includes an article from The Week Junior magazine, along with a sheet of activities designed to get children thinking, talking and writing about what the story means to them.
Activities include:
- Doesn’t it feel good to know that we can undo an ecological disaster that humans inflicted on the area all that time ago? The fact that it could have a positive effect on flood prevention is an added bonus. Or is this just another way of arrogantly interfering with nature? Should we reintroduce bears and wolves as well? Debate as a class or in groups.
- Investigate how beavers build dams across rivers then rewrite your research as a set of instructions.
- Imagine you are really living 400 years in the future but you have been brought back to your current home by a time machine. Write a diary entry about your visit to your ‘old’ house, describing your feelings on seeing the way we ‘used to live’ and discovering things that you use today but would seem very dated to someone from the future.
- Research three or four animals that used to live in the UK but do not anymore. Write a brief fact file about each, describing their key features, when they died out, why they died out, their preferred habitat and what they ate.
Find the entire series of Topical Tuesday resources to download here.
What is The Week Junior?
The Week Junior magazine looks at current affairs and helps children make sense of the world, provides context and clarity to complex issues, improves general knowledge and encourages discussion and debate.
To find out more about The Week Junior and to download its free resources, please go to schools.theweekjunior.co.uk.