Young Learners Earth Day language activity

What is Earth Day?

Earth Day has taken place every year on 22nd April since 1970. According to earthday.org, the mission is to ‘diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide’. It’s been very successful, mobilising over a billion individuals and over seventy-five thousand partners to take positive action to protect our planet and our future. A perfect occasion for you to get involved with this young learners Earth Day language activity.

Why teach a young learner about Earth Day?

As a language teacher, you are part of a worldwide educator community working with diverse groups of young learners. Therefore, shouldn’t part of your role be to empower children, who will face the consequences of the climate emergency most, to take and demand positive action to protect their futures? This involves protecting the more than just the human world, or environment, on which this future depends!

“International Mother Earth Day recognizes a collective responsibility to promote harmony with nature to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environmental needs of present and future generations”

– The United Nations

Your students are likely to come to class on this day with their schemata activated on environmental matters due to Earth Day events, so don’t miss the opportunity to bring it into class.

There’s no excuse not to!

Sorry, but some half-baked excuse like ‘I’m too busy preparing my students for their exams’ just does not wash as a reason not to engage with the climate emergency in the language classroom. That’s because environmental matters are the biggest threat to their future. Neither does the reason that ‘my job is just to teach language’. That’s because as educators we help learners prepare for the best possible future we can help them achieve, and not helping empower them to repair our planet would be an absolute failure in this regard.

Oh, alright then, tell me about the Young Learners Earth Day language activity!

In this lesson, the children will:

• Find out about Earth day and how it is relevant to them.
• Learn vocabulary related to being green.
• Practice listening to a great song about being green.
• Get to sing and dance!

A short Earth Day lesson activity

Before the song

April 22nd is Earth Day. On this day people do things that are good for the Earth, such as plant trees or recycle plastic. What other things do you think they do? Make a list of 4 or 5 things.

While you listen to the song:

Are any of the things on your list in the song? Listen, and find out (by all means sing along and dance too!)

Language learning:

Read these phrases. Listen to the song again. Which phrases are in the song and which are not? Put a tick or across.

What do you think?

• Is this a good song?
• What should we do to protect the Earth?
• Do you do any of these things?

How do you bring Earth Day into your language classes? If you have any ideas, share them in the comments or via the contact page!