Go! Outside
Sustainable Spaces
(Key Stages 3 & 4)
Sustainable Spaces
Essential question: What does it mean for a place to be sustainable?
Project summary:
Students will explore the concept of sustainability by learning about the features
of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that have been designed and created to ensure
it achieves a sustainable future.
Curricular Links:
This project and its activities supports the Key Stage 3 and 4 science & geography curricula.
KS3 Science
Chemistry:
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Materials
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Earth and atmosphere
Physics:
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Energy: Calculation of fuel uses and costs in the domestic context
KS3 Geography
“Teaching should equip pupils with knowledge about diverse places, people, resources and natural
and human environments, together with a deep understanding of the Earth’s key physical and human
processes. As pupils progress, their growing knowledge about the world should help them to deepen
their understanding of the interaction between physical and human processes, and of the formation
and use of landscapes and environments.”
Human and physical geography:
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P1
understand, through the use of detailed place-based exemplars at a variety of scales, the key
processes in: •
physical geography relating to: geological timescales and plate tectonics; rocks, weathering
and soils;
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eather and climate, including the change in climate from the Ice Age to the present; and
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glaciation, hydrology and coasts
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uman geography relating to: population and urbanisation; international development;
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economic activity in the primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors; and the use
of natural resources
understand how human and physical processes interact to influence, and change landscapes,
environments and the climate; and how human activity relies on effective functioning of natural systems
www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk
Go! Outside
Sustainable Spaces
Bronze
Activities
Create a new attraction for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
Resources
Teacher’s notes
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Stratford Waterfront Attraction
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Success Criteria
This activity assumes some prior knowledge of sustainability and related topics, and
as such it is best used as an opportunity to apply learning from introductory lessons
on the subject.
In this activity, students are challenged to design a new attraction for Queen Elizabeth
Olympic Park that draws in new visitors while also meeting the Park’s sustainability
requirements that means it has a positive impact on the people and natural environment
around it.
1. Using the Stratford Waterfront Attraction worksheet, students are encouraged
to develop an idea for a new attraction and then to draw it in plan view and add
annotations. [Tip: have a class discussion about the Success Criteria before you let
students loose with designing]
2. The next task is designed to promote persuasive writing skills as students are
asked to write a paragraph that describes why their idea should be adopted by the
Park. [Tip: ask students to draft their paragraph on rough paper first so that having
had feedback from the scoring exercise, they can redraft their paragraph to cover
as many of these aspects as possible, or perhaps to use more advanced writing
techniques or technical vocabulary].
3. The final task, in which students score their ideas using the Success Criteria, can
be run as a self or peer evaluation task. Students can copy their scores onto the
Stratford Waterfront Attraction worksheet.
P2
www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk
Go! Outside
Sustainable Spaces
Silver
Activities
Using Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a case study, develop an answer the
essential question ‘What does it mean for a place to be sustainable?’
Having applied a set of criteria that describe how sustainable a place is, students
will act in the role of sustainability officers to audit their school (or a part of it),
and develop an idea for how it could improve its impact on its users and the
local environment.
Resources
Teacher’s notes
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Silver Sustainable Spaces Map
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Success Criteria
This project provides a map with some sustainable features of the Park marked on it,
and on the reverse side is further information about how those features operate.
1. T
he first task is for students to examine the Silver Sustainable Spaces Map and
to decide which of the sustainability criteria each feature of the Park fulfils. For
example, a student may decide that the Aquatics Centre represents the criteria of
‘lifestyles’, ‘materials’, ‘water’, in which case they should draw the symbols for those
three criteria in the space provided next to the Aquatics Centre.
For groups of students that have some prior knowledge of the terms and concepts
used in the ‘sustainability criteria’ this should be relatively straightforward,
and could be extended by asking students to conduct some further research
on each of the sites marked on the map [Tip: a good place to start is the Park
website: http://www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk and extremely detailed
information can be found in the Park’s sustainability reports available here: http://
www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk/our-story/transforming-east-london/
sustainability]
For students who are less accustomed to thinking about sustainability, a class
discussion on the seven criteria would be a good place to start. The Success Criteria
may be a helpful resource to support this activity. 2. The next activity is for students to ‘audit’ their school (or a part of it) using the seven
criteria from the previous exercise [although you may want to ask students whether
they think any criteria should be added or removed]. As well as a ‘site visit’, students
could be encouraged to think about other forms of research such as examining plans,
interviews, data collection (perhaps in the school’s outside spaces).
3. The final activity is to ask students (either individually or in small groups) to develop
an idea for a low-cost way to improve the sustainability performance of the school
[see Gold information for ideas on how to extend this aspect of the project].
P3
www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk
Go! Outside
Sustainable Spaces
Gold
Activities
Using Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a case study, students will develop an
answer the essential question ‘What does it mean for a place to be sustainable?’
Having developed a set of criteria that describe how sustainable a place is,
students will act in the role of sustainability officers to audit their school (or a
part of it), and develop an idea for how it could improve its impact on its users
and the local environment.
Resources
Teacher’s notes
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Gold Sustainable Spaces Map
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Success Criteria
1. The first task is to learn from efforts to make Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as
sustainable as possible. By visiting the sites of interest marked on the map (in any
order), students will learn about how they work and how they contribute to the
human or natural ecosystem of the Park. There are ‘questions to consider’ at each
of these sites which will help guide students thinking in the right direction. Students
will take notes about each of the five main sites of interest marked on their map.
2. The second task (which may be carried out on-site or in-school) is for students to
apply what they have learned about the sustainable features of the Park, and to
develop an answer to the essential question ‘what does it mean for a place to be
sustainable’. There are two key outputs from this exercise, a paragraph from each
student that gives their answer to this question in full prose, and a whole-class set
of criteria that can be used to ‘audit’ how sustainable any given site is.
Activity plan: whole-class or small group conversation template
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What does the word ‘sustain’ mean?
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What do the sites you visited have in common?
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What were some of the differences you noticed between the sites?
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What do people need from a place like the Park?
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How is the environment considered in places like the Park?
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Is there a difference or tension between the needs of people and the needs of
the environment?
So, in general, what do you think we mean when we describe a place as
‘sustainable’?
As a class, let’s try and come up with a set of criteria that would allow us to ‘rate’
the sustainability of any place.
[Tip: see the Success Criteria for details on the key areas the Park considers when
thinking about sustainability]
3. The next activity is for students to ‘audit’ their school (or a part of it) using the
criteria from the previous exercise. As well as a ‘site visit’, students could be
encouraged to think about other forms of research such as examining plans, online
research, interviews, data collection (perhaps in the school’s outside spaces).
continues on next page...
P4
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Go! Outside
Sustainable Spaces
Gold continued...
Teacher’s notes
continued
4.
5.
P5
The final activity is to ask students (either individually or in small groups) to develop
an idea for a low-cost way to improve the sustainability performance of the school.
The outputs of this activity could be:
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a set of design drawings
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a presentation
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a written application
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a model or experiment
To raise the stakes and make this project as authentic as possible, you could arrange
for your students to pitch this idea in front of their peers, a teacher and a senior
manager of the school. This would require sufficient time and effort devoted to the
project for students to develop their ideas into solutions that are workable, and
to practise their pitches so they are happy to present publicly. [Tip: a good way to
support students to develop their ideas is to create multiple forms of feedback: from
peers, from teachers, and even self-analysis. You could use a framework such as
cost-benefit analysis, or ‘desirability, feasibility and viability’ to help students to
do this effectively.]
www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk
Go! Outside
Sustainable Spaces
Go! Further
Below are some additional resources that can be used to support the delivery of these projects.
• The Olympic Park: a Landscape Legacy – (5mins 40sec) a fantastic introductory video
created by The Landscape Institute which shows how the Park was transformed from
its industrial state to a vibrant and nature-rich environment.
• Stratford: then and now – a great resource for showing how the Park area has been
transformed in preparation for the Olympics.
• Photos & videos of the London Aquatics Centre – especially good is the time lapse
video of its construction.
• Legacy Communities Scheme Biodiversity Action Plan 2014-2019 – a detailed report
on how the Park has been designed to support a range of natural habitats.
• London 2012 Olympic Park- First sustainable olympics ever – (4mins 09sec), A look at
the green side of the London 2012 Olympic Park. CNN’s Erin McLaughlin reports.
For additional worksheets, including activities to complete while visiting the Park, go to
http://www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk/the-park/things-to-do/for-schools. The
resources which can be downloaded under the headings Key Stage 3 Geography and
Science are particularly relevant to this project.
P6
www.QueenElizabethOlympicPark.co.uk