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Activities and curriculum links
The topic of migration lends itself to a number of teaching approaches, both within individual curriculum subjects and as a cross-curricular study or project.
You can stimulate creative activity as much as scientific and geographical by looking at migration. The activity ideas and curriculum links here are intended to work with the National Curriculum at Key Stages (KS) 2 and 3, (Primary (P) 5 and 6 and Secondary (S) 1 and 2 in Scotland) but many, particularly the creative ideas, are adaptable for KS 1 (P3 and 4).
Migration is a form of adaptation. Birds migrate in order to survive. Studying migration is one of the best ways to understand how animals have adapted to occupy their precarious evolutionary niches – in other words the great risks birds and other creatures must take to survive.
Human impact on the environment has an enormous effect on whether birds can complete their migration routes successfully.
For younger children thinking, discussing and writing imaginatively about migration based on the material on this website can help to underpin messages of concern and care for the local and wider environment.
Few of our familiar garden birds – and less familiar species – stay in one place all their lives. Understanding how they depend on many healthy, varied habitats, makes pupils aware that it is important to look after local spaces that they can help to maintain – as well as far away lakes, jungles and mountains.
The fact that some birds (eg swallows) fly over, feed and land in these habitats on their long migration routes underlines how different parts of the world are linked and can have effects on the birds that use them.
Studying migration with the material provided in these pages can help you to deliver parts of the science and geography curriculum, but it can also develop global awareness of how apparently far flung places are linked through migration routes. Healthy migrating bird populations are a sign of a healthy environment – declining populations indicate problems. A healthy environment is better for people to live in, too.
Last modified: 17 January 2005