ADVERTORIAL
Beyond Themed Weeks - Teaching Sustainability Through Sequenced Science Learning
knowledge from the White Rose Science Sustainability blocks to provide children with the foundations so they can be confidently involved in the decision-making. Together, they apply skills and understanding through practical sustainability projects.
Left: Green Team (Eco club members) with some of their objectives.
‘Our Green Team formulate a variety of initiatives each year and they are always well backed by our community. As teachers, we also map out opportunities to embed sustainability into the curriculum. It is noticeable to see how much the children’s understanding of sustainability has flourished over this time.’ Mr Adam Worthington
Prep School Science Coordinator, AKS Lytham
For example, pupils identified issues with food waste and packaging and collaborated with staff to design new recycling routines. Although these changes initially took time to embed, they are now part of everyday school life, reinforcing the idea that sustainable choices are both achievable and habitual.
Right: Using leftover fruit from dinner time to create flavoured water.
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s sustainability and climate change become increasingly visible in children’s lives, primary classrooms are uniquely placed to turn complex and often emotive issues into meaningful learning. To do this effectively, pupils need secure scientific knowledge they can apply through a sustainability lens - enabling them to form informed opinions and feel empowered to take action. Too often, sustainability has been addressed through one-off activities or themed weeks. While these can raise awareness, they rarely support the depth of understanding children need to develop lasting understanding or make meaningful connections. Sustainability education is most effective when it is deliberately sequenced, grounded in substantive knowledge, and explicitly connected to what children already know.
This principle is increasingly reflected in recent government guidance and curriculum documentation. The Curriculum and Assessment Review (Department for Education, 2025) highlights the need for climate and sustainability education to be clearer, better sequenced and firmly rooted in subject knowledge, particularly within science. At White Rose Science, we address this challenge through our Sustainability blocks, which are embedded across the schemes of learning. Each year group includes two Sustainability blocks that are carefully linked to the preceding block. This ensures that sustainability learning is not an add-on, but a planned opportunity for pupils to apply newly taught scientific knowledge in meaningful contexts. By revisiting sustainability issues through different scientific lenses as pupils progress, understanding is built gradually and securely. As the Sustainability blocks draw directly on prior learning, content is simplified and cognitive load reduced. Furthermore, teachers are clear about which knowledge is being applied and why particular contexts have been chosen, ensuring learning remains purposeful and focused. At AKS Lytham, a White Rose Champion School, sustainability is taken beyond the core White Rose Science Sustainability blocks and developed into a whole school framework for action.
This includes a Climate Action Plan and a Green Team that brings together pupils from Reception to Year 13 alongside staff. These additional structures show the aspirational way schools may choose to extend sustainability work. In classrooms, teachers use scientific
March 2026
Because this work builds directly on prior knowledge, pupils are able to focus on reasoning, evidence and impact rather than grappling with unfamiliar scientific ideas. Sustainability is therefore experienced not as an additional expectation, but as an integral part of how science connects to the real world.
It is clear that sustainability and climate education will be strengthened further when the refreshed national curriculum is introduced from Spring 2027 (DfE, 2025). Science will play a central role in developing pupils’ understanding of environmental systems and human impact, supported by clearer expectations and improved sequencing. The White Rose Science Sustainability blocks provide a strong foundation for this work. Designed to grow alongside curriculum developments, they ensure that sustainability remains firmly rooted in scientific understanding and enquiry. By focusing on clarity, progression and purpose, they help pupils not only learn about sustainability, but understand how their science learning connects to the world they live in and the future they will help shape.
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