Print E-mail

Teachers' survey results: Your questions and comments, our answers


Thank you to all of you who completed our teachers’ survey. We had a great response and your feedback will help us improve our resources. 

We were delighted that the site and the resources have been so well received.  A few people raised questions and provided comments about how we might be able to improve them, which we have answered below. The survey revealed that of those who responded:
  • 99% said the lessons were useful and inspirational;
  • 96% said the lessons raised awareness and helped the wider community change attitudes; and
  • 98% said they would recommend them to other teachers.

We were especially pleased to hear that 49% of respondents said that they had used the lesson ideas across the curriculum for several weeks, and many of your comments highlighted how relevant they are for the new creative curriculum.

Please remember - if you have a specific request you can email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   and we will try to help.

Q. Will I get feedback from the questionnaire?
A. Yes, here it is! We have emailed our schools supporters to let everyone know about the survey results, and teachers who had specific requests or queries have also received individual answers.

Q. Why are there no pictures of Prince Charles on the Schools site?
A. That is a very good question! There is currently only one picture of HRH The Prince of Wales on the schools site (see About the Project) but we will add a few more where appropriate and relevant.

Q. Schools would welcome certificates or acknowledgement of their achievements. Is that possible?
A. We have certificates for classes/schools that participate in the Award scheme. The certificates are automatically downloadable from a school’s account (ie. you have to log in to access them) as classes move up levels. There is one exception, the final level, Rainforest Guardian, when classes’ work is reviewed by The Prince’s Rainforests Project and then a letter of congratulations and hard copy Guardian certificate is sent to the class.

Q. We do a piece of coursework in GCSE just on rainforest conservation so resources for older students would be excellent. Is that possible?
A. We realise that the majority of resources on our site are aimed at primary and early secondary school ages. However, the Key Stage 4 lessons (ages 14 – 16) and some of the other free resources, such as Rainforest Multimedia, are suitable for older students.

We are also now also offering UK schools free copies (in quantities of 180 only, including a dispenser) of our booklet "Rainforests: The Burning Issue", which is suitable for older students - please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   by 23rd October with your name, school and full postal address to place your order.

Otherwise we would recommend that GCSE students go to our main website for resources to help them with their coursework. The About rainforests, Emergency Package and Resources sections may be particularly helpful.

Q. Are there any more sound packages - like Amazon singing, chanting? Downloading the rainforest sound effects was very difficult and the sound clips were too short for an assembly.
A. We are sorry the information and options provided on our site were incorrect -  the rainforest sounds are in fact not supposed to be downloadable, but we will look into this. We will also try to add some links to external websites that provide rainforest sounds. In the meantime you might like to try doing an internet search, for example, you could enter the search term “Amazonian music”. For frog sounds you could go to www.exploratorium.edu/frogs/rainforest/index.html

Comment: I would appreciate any updates.
A. If you tick the “receive updates” box when you sign up, you will be kept updated on schools news and initiatives by email. If you did not tick this box when you signed up, you can change your settings (and choose to receive email updates) at any time by logging into your account.

Comment: The certificates could be brighter to make them more appealing to children. Also they would be better if they could be awarded to individual children rather than the class - that way they can take them home and spread the word to their families, which raises awareness in the local community.
A. Thank you for this suggestion, we will look into the possibility of making the certificates brighter. You are at liberty to award certificates to individual children rather than the whole class (up to Rainforest Explorer, level 3 of the Award Scheme) as when you download the certificate from your school account, you can print it as many times as you like. At Rainforest Guardian level, unfortunately it is not feasible for us to and send individual printed certificates to each child. However, we could send a blank Rainforest Guardian certificate (scanned, or a PDF version) to the teacher to print out and fill in names of individual children, once the class has been confirmed as Rainforest Guardians. If your class is at Guardian level and would like us to do this, please send us an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   with “Guardian certificate” in the subject line.

Comment: It would be useful to have simple maps showing the main rainforests in relation to the world and the continents because little children find it hard to understand that rainforest are real places.  
A. There is a map on the kids’ rainforest factsheet; however this is very small and not necessarily easy to find, so we will look into creating a downloadable PDF of a world map with rainforest regions marked on it in the resources section.
Update: We have now added a World Rainforest Map (courtesy of Mongabay.com) to the Rainforest Factsheets page, showing where the main rainforests are in the world. You can download the map as a PDF.

Comment: It was sometimes difficult to get some of the internet videos to show the children at school as my county/school restricts access to certain websites.
A. We realise this can be a problem and have been trying to make the most important videos available on the Schools site rather than YouTube. Unfortunately it is a time consuming process, but please do check from time to time for new non-YouTube videos. Also don’t forget to check out our supporters’ frog videos (under video category "Supporter videos") as these are hosted on our own videoplayer rather than YouTube, and therefore should not have the same access problems.

Comment: I feel that the materials for children aged 3-5 are rather limiting because templates are used. I prefer to work on their creative development by allowing free expression and drawing. 
A. Our aim is to provide a selection of templates for those teachers who find them useful. However we encourage teachers to adapt our ideas, lessons and resources to their own needs and those of the children they teach.