Weather Together Toolkit: Preparing youth for extreme weather events

Summary

Extreme weather in the UK is happening more frequently. Despite the increasing knowledge of a climate crisis, many of us wouldn’t know what to do in the next heatwave or how to prepare when flood warnings are issued. The lack of environmental education around extreme weather in the UK has increased eco-anxiety among young people.

The British Red Cross Weather Together resource for environmental education provides tools for teaching 10-16 year olds about the dangers and impacts of extreme weather events, including strategies for coping and community assistance. The structure of the toolkit is through a mix of learning activities on three topics: flood education, heatwaves, and eco-anxiety. This toolkit can be utilised by parents and teachers of the intended groups or students themselves.

What is the toolkit for?

The Red Cross designed this toolkit for learning about weather and climate change impact, to equip learners with the skills and knowledge they need to prepare for and cope with extreme weather. The toolkit includes three topics:

1. Flood Education: The toolkit provides resources on a wide variety of flood topics, including the dangers of flooding, preparing your home, and how flooding effects everyone. There is also a case study on how flooding affects a real UK community through a filmed case study from Brechin, Scotland. This resource helps young people understand what happens before, during and after a major flood event, and how a community responds, adapts and recovers together.
2. Heatwaves: The toolkit provides resources on understanding the facts of heatwaves, safety strategies, and decision-making advice. Learn tips for hydration, shade, and community support to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
3. Eco-anxiety: The toolkit teaches about strategies to combat eco-anxiety among young people, including coping and helping others. Learn sustainable choices, community action, and mindfulness.

Key Features

The toolkit is structured so that educators can dip into each of the 3 topics (flooding, eco-anxiety, and heatwaves) and select the weather learning activities that best suit the learners and lessons.

The toolkit has a learn, apply, share structure:

• learn activities: raise awareness
• apply activities: teach preparedness
• share activities: build community resilience.

For each topic, it is suggested that at least one learn and one apply activity be completed before completing a shared activity. Each activity is on a different PowerPoint to help match them together as is needed. In each PowerPoint, the first slide contains instructions which includes how to run the activity, suggested adaptations, links to any worksheets, curriculum links and a suggestion of timings. Depending on the amount of time available, one activity can be completed in a session, or be combined. Each PowerPoint contains all the slides needed to run the activity. There is also information in the ‘notes’ section of each slide to support the delivery of the activity. At the end of each PowerPoint is a resources and support section which signposts to helpful information.

The Weather Together Award: To help build community resilience and support you with homework, the Weather Together award encourages learners to share what they learn in the weather activities with friends and family. The Weather Together award tracker can be used to log progress.

Who is the toolkit for?

This toolkit is primarily for youth aged 10-16 to assist in understanding the issue of extreme weather events and share advice in preparing for and coping with these circumstances. Educators, youth leaders, and parents can access the toolkit to assist in their teaching about the three core topics and get advice from British Red Cross on how to proceed in conversations regarding extreme weather events. The toolkit can be used in a wide range of settings and build on existing understanding of the topics to develop further knowledge for teachers and students alike.

Transformational Adaptation Themes the toolkit helps with …

Active engagement

Lasting change depends on genuine collaboration with communities. This pillar is about working together over time, recognising that emotions and values shape how people see risk, and building a shared vision for the future of each place.

Long-term change and monitoring transformation

Because the future is uncertain, adaptation must be flexible and able to evolve. This pillar is about designing actions that can adjust to changing conditions, acting quickly where risks are greatest, and learning continuously through open and transparent monitoring.