Counting life: a 20-minute outdoor science lesson

What the class will do

Take ten slow steps, count every living thing you find, then work out together what makes something alive.

Notice everything that is alive around you and begin to work out what it means to be living - breathing, growing, reproducing, dying.

This is the base lesson, also introduced as Life detectives on our homepage. The classroom version helps you prepare it for your place and class.

Space and preparation

Any outdoor spot with ten steps of room: a playground corner, a grass edge, a quiet stretch of pavement.

Nothing to bring. Walk out as you are.

Check the space and conditions before taking the class out, following your school’s procedures. Agree a boundary everyone can use. Children can point, describe or listen from an accessible spot; the task does not require collecting or handling wildlife.

Count · 5 minutes

Look at the sky together before you set off. Whatever it's doing, name it out loud.

Set the boundary first: ten steps from where you stand, no further. Pairs work well.

Say to the class: “Count everything that's alive within ten steps.”

If they say there's nothing here... Crouch down with them. Grass, moss, a weed in a crack. The small things count.

If they race to finish first... Ask them to prove each one: what tells you it's alive?

If the counting turns into arguing... Count together as one group, pointing as you go.

See · 4 minutes

Encourage children to look up, down, under...

Say to the class: “What can you see?”

If they only name big things... Ask for the smallest living thing they can find.

If eyes wander to each other instead... Try a silent minute: point, don't speak.

Hear · 3 minutes

Try thirty seconds of complete silence first. The longer the quiet, the more they hear.

Say to the class: “What can you hear?”

If they say they hear nothing... Cup hands behind ears and wait thirty more seconds. Traffic does not count: what else?

Alive · 4 minutes

Let them argue. A fallen leaf, a seed, moss on a wall: alive or not? The wondering is the learning.

Say to the class: “What is telling you it's alive?”

If they are unsure about a leaf on the ground... Ask: was it alive? Is the tree it came from alive? Both answers teach.

Living · 4 minutes

Four signs they can test anything against. Try them on a bird, a tree, a stone.

Say to the class: “What does it mean to be living: breathing, growing, reproducing, dying.”

If the words feel too big... Act them out: breathe in, stretch tall and grow, drift like a seed, flop down.

Circle

Say to the class: “What was the most surprising living thing you found?”

Let a few children share with the whole circle.

Say to the class: “Was anything hard to decide: alive or not alive?”

A feather, a seed, a fallen leaf. Hard cases make the best thinking.

Say to the class: “How many living things do you think share our whole school grounds?”

No right answer. Big guesses welcome.

Curriculum connections

The authored lesson links to England Year 2: living things and their habitats. It supports observing and discussing living, dead and never-alive things.

For US teachers, the pack references NGSS 2-LS4-1. To address its comparison of habitats, repeat the observation in a second habitat and compare what children find. One count in one spot is a starting point, not completion of the standard.

After the lesson

Ask children to draw a living thing they noticed and something they were unsure about. Record their own question to revisit on the next outing. A quiet patch or a disputed fallen leaf can be the beginning of the next lesson.