This assembly or class play looks at man's impact on the environment - in the context of five different habitats: a pond, the rainforest, the Poles, the Desert and the Ocean - and what we as the human race can do to undo the harm done.
As this play was originally written whilst I was in the UK, the ‘campaigners’ at the end are from the World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace, the National Trust, and Woodland Trust; these can easily be replaced by World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, National Parks Conservation Association and Rainforest Alliance – or go to my website www.plays-r-ussell.com for the US version, which is exactly the same play but with these names featured as opposed to the four UK ones listed above) .
Written by Sue Russell, this is one of a set of plays written on the science curriculum for primary/elementary schools. (Also available: Rock n Roll Assembly on The study of Rocks, and The Planets Assembly – an alien’s voyage through our solar system).
These assemblies are easy to do, written ‘by a teacher for teachers’ to minimize the time and stress ingredients which can be so off-putting when considering ‘a performance’. Written for a cast of 30 (this number can easily be adapted to a smaller class size), each assembly comes with a seating plan – included so that the children file in, in the correct order, and speak in the correct order!
A suggested selection of rock songs are included which, in my experience, really ‘lift’ the performance, and are chosen to appeal to children and adults alike!
My assemblies are written to entertain and educate – they are based on the curriculum, according to the QCA documents, and cover all the major teaching points for each unit of work.
I have written plays for other subjects such as history, geography, PSHCE (Citizenship Skills) and one-offs like Valentines and St. Patrick's Day. These can all be viewed on my website www.plays-r-ussell.com which has a complete listing of my material under UK and USA catalogs.
In addition to these 'large cast, plays for performance' I have produced a set of Group Readers which are for groups of 6 children, written in sets of 5, complete with quizzes. These are a great in-classroom resource, for guided reading or 'mini performances'. Again, these can also be seen on my website www.plays-r-ussell.com

Our Planet Class Play or Assembly by Sue Russell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.