Lesson video

Hi everybody, my name is Miss Simkin and I am going to be teaching your science lesson today.

I am really excited about today's lesson because we are going to be learning about a scientist called Rachel Carson.

And she is a huge role model of mine.

She's one of my very favourite scientists.

And hopefully by the end of today's lesson, you will be able to see why she's a very impressive person.

So let us get started.

Our lesson question today is, who is Rachel Carson? And in today's lesson, we'll follow this agenda.

So we'll start with our star words, then we're going to learn about the power of the pen, which is essentially a story about Rachel Carson's life and how she used her pen for good.

Then we're going to learn about DDT and pesticides, and then we're going to learn about the legacy that Rachel Carson left.

Because even though she's no longer alive, she is still the cause of lots of good things that are going on in the world today.

So that's the legacy that she's left behind.

And then we're going to have a chance to be little mini Rachel Carsons and use our pens for good as well.

Well, I'll explain more about that when we get there.

For this lesson, you will need please, a piece of paper, a pencil, a coloured pencil if you would like to take your, sorry, mark your work in a different colour and a ruler.

If you don't have those things, pause the video and go and grab them now, please.

Our star words today are these.

I meant to say them, and then you're going to say them.

It's important we practise our star words, so one, we pronounce them correctly and two, when we say things out loud, it helps us to remember them.

So make sure you'll say them out loud, when I point to the screen please.

Marine biologist, conservationist, pesticides, MP, constituent, good job.

So let's talk about what some of these words mean.

A marine biologist and a conservationist are both types of scientist.

And I'm going to give you the definitions for those in the lesson.

Same with pesticides, we'll talk about it when we get there.

Then MP and a constituent, I'm going to tell you what they mean now.

An MP stands for a member of parliament and a member of parliament is somebody who's been elected to the parliament of a country.

And the parliament is responsible for making lots of decisions in the country.

A constituent is a member of an area that elects or represents a representative.

So for example, you would have a member of parliament for the area that you live in and all of those people who live in that area are constituents and they are the ones who get to vote and elect who they want that member of parliament to be.

So I'm a constituent.

When you are old enough, you will be a constituent and you will get to vote for your member of parliament.

Those are going to be relevant at the end of the lesson.

Let's start with the power of the pen.

This is Rachel Carson, and she was born in 1907.

So more than a hundred years ago, she was born in the United States of America, the USA.

She was a marine biologist, which is a kind of scientist who studies life in the sea.

She was also a conservationist, which is a kind of scientist who works to protect the environment and wildlife and she was an author, somebody who writes books.

So she was all three of those things.

How like you're listening.

Can you please match the job to its description? So what's the definition of a marine biologist and conservationist and an author? Write the answers on your piece of paper please.

Pause the video and do that for me now.

Fantastic, let's check your answers.

So a marine biologist matched with number two, a scientist who studies the sea.

Conservationists matched with number three, the scientist who works to protect the environment and wildlife.

An author matched with number one, somebody who writes books.

I'm going to tell you a little bit more about Rachel Carson's life now.

So she grew up loving animals and loving wildlife.

And at the age of only eight, she writes a book about birds.

It didn't get published, but that just shows how much she loved learning and loved animals.

By the age of 11, she actually did get published, she was published in a children's magazine.

And as an adult, she continued writing.

And over the course of her life, she writes three amazing books.

And in fact, they were so great that she won a National Book Award, which is a really great achievement.

These are the events we just spoke about in Rachel Carson's life.

Can you put them in the correct order please? So write a number one next to the event in her life that comes first and then a number two and number three and a number four and you can write them in order on your page.

Pause the video and do that for me now, please.

Great, let's check our answers.

So number one, the first event was that she wrote a book about birds aged eight.

Number two, where she was published in a children's magazine.

Number three, she wrote three books about the sea.

Oh, I didn't think I told you that they were about the sea last time, surprise.

And number four, she won the National Book Award.

Well done if you've got those correct, give yourself a tick.

And if you made a mistake, that's okay, making mistakes is what helps our brain to grow stronger and helps us learn quicker.

So you can just correct your mistake.

Next, we're going to learn about DDT and pesticides.

So a pesticide is a substance that's used to destroy organisms that are harmful to plants.

That definition is on the screen.

Can you read it to me, please? Great, a substance used to destroy organisms that are harmful to plants.

And you can see in this picture that we have a farmer here, who's spraying pesticides on his crops.

So there are some organisms that eat crops or damage them in some way.

So an example would be caterpillars eating the leaves of something.

If you're a farmer, you don't really want something eating your crops.

So you'd spray them with pesticides to keep things like caterpillars off them.

DDT is a type of pesticide and DDT was not just poisoning the pest on the crops, but it was actually extremely harmful and it was poisoning entire food chains, completely other animals than what it was aiming and targeting to poison.

And it was being passed up the food chain from insects to slightly bigger animals like birds, and then to bigger animals again.

And it meant that birds all over America where DDT was being sprayed were dying.

And lots of people were quite confused as to why.

Rachel Carson was one of the scientists who realised that it was DDT causing all of these birds and animals to die.

And she wrote a book called "Silent Spring." And this is a quote from her book that I think is quite powerful.

So we're going to read it.

"What we have to face is not an occasional dose of poison which has accidentally got into some article of food, but a persistent and continuous poisoning of the whole human environment." So this is an example of some really persuasive writing in her book.

She's arguing that DDT and the use of pesticides is having a detrimental effect on the entire environment.

And when she wrote this book, this is in the sixties and it's at a time when people, they weren't really aware of the effects that humans could have on the environment.

Nowadays, we talk quite a lot about how to protect our environment and the things that we can do to help our environment.

But at the time that Rachel Carson was writing this, it was pretty revolutionary.

These were new ideas.

Not only did she write a book, she also stood up in front of the US Senate, and she gave a speech that was just as powerful as her writing and she convinced lots of people of the dangers of DDT and these pesticides.

Here's some questions.

What is a pesticide? And what did Rachel Carson give a speech at the US Senate about? Could you please pause the video and answer these questions for me now? Great, let's check our answers.

So a pesticide is a substance used to destroy organisms that are harmful to plants.

Give yourself a tick if you've got that correct.

If you made a mistake, that's okay, just correct it for me, please.

And then Rachel Carson gave a speech about DDT and why it should be banned.

Or you might have written DDT and why it is harmful.

Now, let's learn about the impact that Rachel Carson had.

What was the effect of her writing about DDT and pesticides? Well, one of the things that happened is that the US Environmental Protection Agency was set up directly as a result of Rachel Carson's work.

And this is an agency that's still around today and their sole aim is protecting the environment in the United States.

And one of the first things that they did was they banned DDT, which was a great success for Rachel Carson and the environment.

The DDT has had lots of really positive effects on the environment since it was founded.

They've been responsible for cleaning up toxic waste, for increasing the amount of recycling and reducing car emissions, just to name a few things.

So, although Rachel Carson didn't set up the United States Environmental Protection Agency, if it wasn't for her ideas and her voice and the power of her pen, the United States Environmental Protection Agency would never have been set up.

And then all of these amazing things that they've done for the environment never would have happened.

So that is Rachel Carson's lasting legacy.

And it's a pretty impressive one.

Can you please answer this question? What are some of the achievements of the US Environmental Protection Agency? Pause the video and answer this question now, please.

Great, you might have written something like this.

Their achievements include banning DDT, cleaning up toxic waste, increasing recycling, and reducing car emissions.

Well done if you remembered all of those, but well done even if you just got two or three, good job.

This brings us to the last part of our lesson, which is more over to you.

We are going to use our pens for good, just like Rachel Carson did.

So we are going to write about an environmental cause.

So Rachel Carson was writing about banning pesticides.

We're going to write, or you can choose, you can either choose to write about bees, plastic pollution or you can choose your own.

So it might be that you have an environmental cause that you're really passionate about, or maybe you want to do some research on something else, that's absolutely fine.

But I'm going to teach you about bees and plastic pollution so that you have those to choose as well if you don't want to go and do your own research.

We're going to start with bees and I would like you please to make notes under these headings.

It's important that you use these headings 'cause they're going to link to something we do afterwards.

So we're going to talk about the threat to the bees, why it's important to protect them, and then what we or society can do to help protect the bees.

So can you pause the video and can you write these three headings? You probably need to leave only two or three lines under each one.

Pause the video and prepare that for me now, please.

Great, let's talk about bees.

There are lots of threats to bees.

Some of the main ones they were pesticides that we've learned about already and habitat loss.

So bees love habitats, like meadows that have lots of wild flowers in them.

And those kinds of spaces are disappearing because wild meadows are often replaced with things like farms or cities and infrastructure, or even green spaces like parks often get rid of their wildflower meadows because they want to keep the grass short by mowing it.

So bees are losing their habitat at a very quick rate.

That's the threat.

Pause the video and make some notes on the threat to bees.

So why then is saving the bees important? Well, bees have pollinators.

And they pollinate most of the world's food crops.

The estimate is that about a third of the food that we eat every day is pollinated by bees.

That's a third everyday.

How much each day? A third.

So if we had no more bees, if they were wiped out, then a third of that food would not be able to be pollinated anymore.

We wouldn't have it and the world would go hungry.

Pause the video and make some notes about why bees are important.

Finally, what can we do? One of the main things we can do is to protect green spaces, specifically meadows, wildflower meadows where bees live and to plant more wild flowers in our green spaces that already exist.

Can you pause the video and write some notes on what we can do.

We're going to look at one more environmental cause.

So now we're going to talk about plastic pollution.

So plastic pollution is plastic that ends up places where it shouldn't be.

Like in our oceans.

The reason that plastic pollution is a problem that it's a threat, is because it kills marine animals.

They get tangled in it, they eat it.

And not only does it harm them, but it can also harm other animals up the food chain.

So if a small fish, eats lots of small bits of plastic, it might not die but then that small fish is going to get eaten by a bigger fish and that plastic's going to go into that bigger fish, and it's going to keep eating small fish that all have plastic in them, and that fish is then going to be eaten by an even bigger fish.

And it's going to eat all that plastic.

And it's just going to keep accumulating up the food chain.

That's called bioaccumulation.

What's it called? Bioaccumulation.

So plastic can kill marine animals and it can also get into food chains.

Pause the video and write down what the threat is.

Well, why is looking after our oceans and the animals that live in it important? Well, other than the fact that we might just inherently want to protect marine animals and we might not want turtles to die and get tangled in plastic or dolphins, our oceans are also a really important ecosystem.

They are the largest ecosystem on earth and we need to protect them.

There are lots and lots of reasons why we need to protect our oceans, but that's not the focus of this lesson.

So I'm just going to give you one.

The ocean provides 50%, that's half of the air that we breathe.

If we don't look after our oceans, then we're not looking after our earth and after ourselves.

Pause the video and write some notes on why it's important.

And lastly, what can we do? Well, it's simple.

We can use less plastic.

And governments and MPs could support the ban of single use plastic.

So single use plastic is the kind of plastic you'd only use once.

So maybe a plastic water bottle you drink, and then you'd throw it away.

So we could ban plastic like that, or we could tax it so that people are less likely to use it and some of that money could go towards conserving, looking after our oceans.

Pause the video and write some notes on what we can do.

Great, so you should have a few things for each section.

You can now choose which threat you want to write about.

Do you want to write about the bees, plastic pollution or choose your own? Pause the video, have a think, choose one now, please.

Now you've got that in mind.

We are going to write a letter to our local MP.

Now, I don't know who your local MP is, so we're just going to keep it general and say, dear my local MP.

But if you wanted to, you could do some research after this and find who your local MP actually is, and you could send it to them for real.

And I'm sure you could ask whoever's at home to help you with that or maybe your teacher in school could help you to do that.

So you're going to use this template to write a letter, it's in three parts, I'll show you a part and then you'll pause to write it and then we'll go to the next part.

So this is the first part, and you can use this frame, this template to write it.

Dear my local MP, I am writing to you as a constituent because I am concerned about, what are you concerned about, the threat to the bees, plastics, something else? Did you know that? And then this is where you're going to write some of the threats that you wrote about in your notes.

So for example, did you know that bees are losing their habitat? Would be an example.

Pause the video and write this section of your letter now, please.

Now I want you to leave a line, start a new paragraph and write the next section of your letter.

This is an important issue because, and this is where you're going to write your notes or sorry, use your notes to write why it's important.

For example, this is an important issue because bees are pollinators and so on.

Pause the video and write this section of your letter now, please.

And then the last paragraph, so leave a line again.

Here are some solutions where you could put in place to help the problem.

And then here is where you write it up, what we can do.

So for example, banning single use plastics, and then you say, I look forward to hearing from you, yours sincerely, and then you write your name.

You don't write on it, you write your name.

Do you see what I mean? Pause the video and do the section now, please.

This was just a practise today, unless you do actually want to find your MP as inserted, but it's a really good practise because it's really important to write to our local MP so we feel passionate about something.

Because we know that MPs do read the personal handwritten letters that people write them.

And they can have an impact.

If your MP knows that lots of its constituents want the same thing, then they're more likely to act on that.

And we know from Rachel Carson's story, just how powerful the pen can be.

Well done for all of your hard work today, I am really, really impressed.

You accomplished loads today, and I hope you enjoyed learning about Rachel Carson.

If you would like to share your work with Oak National, you can ask your parent or carer to share your work by tagging Oak National at #LearnwithOak.

You can also tag Teach_STEMinism which is me, and then I will be able to see your work too and I would love that.

Remember before you go, to do your end of lesson quiz, please, but most importantly, remember to have a fantastic rest of your day and to come back and watch another science lesson soon, please, bye everybody.