What is the Big Schools' Birdwatch?Run every January and February, the Big and Little Schools' Birdwatches are free activities for all UK schools and youth groups (brownies, scouts etc). Get involved in our next Schools' Birdwatch, 24 January–4 February 2011, and you'll not only be taking part in the world's biggest birdwatch, but also helping us monitor UK bird numbers. This simple activity is for all ages and abilities and is a great way to get to know more about the wildlife visiting your school grounds. If you don't have school grounds, don't worry! You can still take part by visiting a local park. But best of all, it only takes an hour to complete, and is rich in curriculum links. It couldn't be easierFollow our step-by-step guide to take part in the Big Schools' Birdwatch: - From the end of September 2010, you can register online to get your free teachers activity pack. Full of facts, details about all of the common birds you might see, and further ideas and suggestions about the activity, you don't want to do your Birdwatch without it. If you submitted your results in 2010, we will automatically send you our fantastic pack in the Autumn term
- Arrange a day between 24 January-4 February to do your watch. Morning is the best time of day to see birds – or after break when they come to pick up dropped crumbs from the playground
- Set up some feeders in a convenient place near your classroom windows, and around your school grounds
- Watch birds for a total of one hour, keeping count of how many birds of the same kind you see at any one time. You only need to record the birds actually in your grounds or in the park, not those flying over
- Send us your results! These are vital to us. You can do this online or by post and once you've done this we'll enter you into our prize draw for some fantastic goodies for your school. If you do the count in shifts, pull together all your counts so that you are ready to submit ONE set of results for each class or group
- Once you have sent in your results we collect them together and do some serious adding-up. This helps us to see how birds are doing across the UK and creates an overview of which birds are making the most of school grounds
- As a thank you for taking part, we'll send you a certificate and letter telling you the results of the survey
We can't think of a better way to start an interest in birds and wildlife for the children in your class than for them to observe and engage with the world around them.
This was a wonderful way to spend the morning! We used the great idea of beginning with hot chocolate and biscuits, which got the children really excited. Throughout the birdwatch, the pupils were enthusiastic and very interested. Children were coming in the next day saying what birds they'd seen in their garden that morning. We used the information collected to carry out an investigation in maths, drawing graphs, concluding from results and to discuss probability. Reception teacher, Cambridgeshire In 2009, just under 90,000 UK school children and teachers stuck black paper with eye-slits on classroom windows, put up bird posters, borrowed binoculars, made bird feeders out of old plastic bottles, and told us about which birds they spotted in their school grounds. Read on to find out why. More... |  |
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