Ashbrook Junior School in Borrowash, Derby were so surprised and grateful when they received a hand-written response from Sir David Attenborough after a Year 5 class sent him their climate change letters. A clear demonstration of kindness which helped to inspire the class with a personal reply to their hard work.

In December 2022, Year 5 started to craft their persuasive letters which were based around climate change and after many weeks of learning and researching, their teacher sent them in the post at the end of term. To inspire and inform the class, they watched videos of David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg at climate change conferences and conducted their own research to build a strong knowledge base. The children were encouraged to use persuasive language and base their letters on powerful speeches as well as climate change research. This project spanned the curriculum with related topics such as deforestation being taught in Geography, encouraging the class to link their learning from a broad range of subjects into their piece of writing.

An extract from one of the student letters reads:
“It is outrageous that climate change is destroying our Earth, we need to act now because there is no planet B.”

Every letter, carefully handwritten by the students, was copied and sent to Sir David Attenborough by their class teacher Michelle McGurk, holding on to hope that he would respond. To her surprise, in January 2023, he wrote a response back to the entire class.

The letter read:

“Dear Year 5,
Thank you very much for your letters I congratulate you on being so well-informed about the problems we have inflicted on our planet – and that you are telling other people about it.
Best wishes to you all,
David Attenborough”

Michelle McGurk, Year 5 Class Teacher at Ashbrook Junior School added:

“My Year 5 class are very passionate about this topic so we decided to write a persuasive letter/ speech, and I encouraged the class to imagine them delivering it at the next COP conference. We thought Sir David Attenborough, as a huge climate activist, would appreciate reading our work and we are so grateful that he took the time to respond. It’s incredibly inspiring and so important to be able to show children that their work has a real impact beyond the classroom”

Here at Transform Trust we are so grateful to our creative, resourceful teachers across our family of schools who are continually reaching out externally and are successfully bringing their classroom practice to life, making learning relevant and engaging for their children. Many show immense kindness and will take the time to zoom call, write letters and capture their imagination and it really brings the curriculum to life.