Environmental Education and English in the New Zealand Curriculum

The aims of the English curriculum are to help students to:

• engage with and enjoy language in all its varieties;
• understand, respond to, and use oral, written, and visual language effectively in a range of contexts.

English in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1994) contains a range of achievement objectives that provide opportunities for integrating the aims, key concepts, and key dimensions of environmental education with English programmes.

The following sections (Oral Language, Written Language, and Visual Language) identify strands and achievement objectives in English in the New Zealand Curriculum and suggests some associated study topics that could be used to meet the aims of environmental education and explore its concepts and dimensions. (These sections are the online version of the table on pages 36 and 37 of Guidelines for Environmental Education for New Zealand Schools.) Potentially, any activity in English could be based on issues related to the environment. For this reason, the sections present examples drawn from the broad expression of the achievement aims for each strand.

The skills developed in English can contribute to meeting all of the aims and provide a means of engaging with all of the concepts of environmental education.

English provides opportunities for exploring the key dimensions of environmental education. Learning in English can be undertaken through education in the environment, such as when students write about their experiences in different environments. Education about the environment can be pursued through a range of learning experiences, such as reading accounts by different authors of their environmental experiences. Education for the environment will occur when students act on their learning in ways that maintain and improve the quality of the environment, such as when they use their language skills to advance an environmental cause.

Oral Language | Written Language | Visual Language

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