3 Ways to...Prioritise Opportunities

Learners may have identified areas of your site that are used or underused, green or not-so-green, full of nature or more human-made. An exciting next step is prioritising the opportunities you’d like to explore further on your Nature Park journey. Try the activities in Explore your school site first, to collect information and experiences about the space around you. 

What ‘problem’ areas have you identified? What wildlife would you like to see more of? What areas are nice to spend time in, or not so nice? You probably have lots of ideas that answer all of these questions, but addressing all of them would be impossible – a good first step is to choose the top three opportunities you’d like to focus on. It may be helpful to refer to your vision statement to guide learners' choices. Our guidance presents three different activities that encourage design thinking and can help you and your learners pick out the most important concerns for people and nature:

• Diamond ranking
• Voting on your ideas
• Impact/effort matrix

For younger learners: 

If working with early years learners, can you devise a traffic light system for different opportunities? 

• Red: Not important, or we can’t change this right now 
• Amber: We need to make a change at some stage 
• Green: It’s time to take action and do it now!