Theme: The Hedgehog (Gary). One animal, four subjects, laddered EYFS → GCSE. This is real, ready-to-teach content with answer keys — and a template you (or cmux) can copy for any other animal or topic. Pick a subject; scroll the age bands.
Core facts: hedgehogs are nocturnal insectivores that hibernate in winter. ~5,000–7,000 spinestravels up to ~2 km a nightbaby = hoglet
A hedgehog lives outside — in gardens, under hedges and at the edge of woods. It sleeps in the daytime and comes out at night to look for food. We call animals that come out at night nocturnal. Hedgehogs love to eat wriggly minibeasts like worms, beetles and slugs. In the cold winter they curl up in a warm pile of leaves and sleep for a long time. This long winter sleep is called hibernation.
Night-time — hedgehogs are nocturnal.
Delivery: read-aloud, big pictures, act out “curling up to hibernate”. No writing required.
Every living thing needs energy. That energy starts with the Sun. Green plants use sunlight to make their own food, so we call them producers. Animals can’t make their own food, so they are consumers — they must eat plants or other animals. A predator hunts and eats other animals; the animal that gets eaten is the prey. A hedgehog is a consumer and a predator: it hunts slugs and beetles. But a hedgehog can also be prey — a badger might eat it. We show “who eats what” using a food chain. The arrow means “energy goes to”:
oak leaf 🍂 → earthworm 🪱 → hedgehog 🦔 → badger 🦡
Producer: the lettuce (a plant makes its own food). Top predator: the fox (nothing in this chain eats it). The slug is prey to the hedgehog; the hedgehog is both predator (of the slug) and prey (of the fox).
Extension: why are there usually more slugs than hedgehogs? (Energy is lost at each step, so fewer animals can be fed higher up.)
In a real habitat, food chains link together into a food web because most animals eat more than one thing and are eaten by more than one predator. Species depend on each other — this is interdependence. If one species is removed, the whole web is affected. Hedgehogs help gardeners by eating slugs and snails. But many gardeners use slug pellets to kill slugs. The problem: a hedgehog then eats the poisoned slugs, so the poison passes up the food chain into the hedgehog. Combined with habitat loss and busy roads, this is one reason hedgehog numbers in Britain have fallen sharply.
Hedgehogs eat the poisoned slugs, so the toxin is passed along the food chain into the hedgehog (an early idea of bioaccumulation). Fewer slugs also means less food for hedgehogs, so the population can fall for two reasons.
Organisms are grouped into trophic levels: producers (level 1), primary consumers (2), secondary consumers (3), and so on. Only about 10% of the energy at one level is passed to the next — the rest is lost through respiration, movement and heat, and in undigested/excreted material. This is why food chains are usually short and why pyramids of biomass narrow towards the top. Persistent pesticides behave differently from energy: they are not lost, so they bioaccumulate, becoming more concentrated in top consumers like hedgehogs. Because hedgehogs sit high in the web and respond quickly to habitat change, ecologists treat them as an indicator species for garden and hedgerow biodiversity.
10,000 → 1,000 (primary) → 100 (secondary) → 10 kJ (tertiary consumer / 4th level).
Working: 10,000 × 0.1 × 0.1 × 0.1 = 10 kJ.
Extend (2 marks): explain that although energy decreases, a fat-soluble pesticide would increase in concentration up the levels (bioaccumulation), putting top consumers most at risk.
Non-fiction reading, vocabulary, and writing that grows from a caption to a full article.
Let’s sound out our animal: h – e – dg – e – h – o – g → “hedgehog”. It starts with the /h/ sound, like hat and hop. A hedgehog is small and spiky. Its spikes are called spines. When it is scared it rolls into a ball.
The /h/ sound. A good caption: “The hedgehog is spiky.”
The hedgehog is one of Britain’s best-loved wild animals. It is covered in around five to seven thousand sharp spines, which protect it from predators such as badgers and foxes. Hedgehogs are nocturnal, which means they are active at night. They snuffle through gardens and hedgerows searching for beetles, worms and slugs. As the weather turns cold, a hedgehog eats as much as it can and then hibernates through the winter, usually from November until March. Sadly, hedgehogs are becoming rarer, partly because of busy roads and the loss of safe, wild places to live.
1. Around 5,000–7,000. 2. Active/awake at night. 3. Any two of: beetles, worms, slugs. 4. Busy roads or loss of safe wild places to live.
Persuasive writing makes the reader want to act. Strong tools include: imperative verbs (“Cut a hole in your fence!”), facts & statistics to build trust, emotive language to stir feeling, direct address (“you”), and a rhetorical question. Your task is to persuade neighbours to make their gardens hedgehog-friendly.
“Did you know one of Britain’s favourite animals could vanish from your street? Hedgehog numbers have collapsed — but you can help tonight. Cut a small 13 cm hole in your fence, put out a shallow dish of water, and give these gentle visitors a safe place to roam. Don’t let them disappear.”
(Contains: rhetorical question, fact, imperatives, direct address, emotive language, call to action.)
In the extract above (KS2 read-box), the writer shapes the reader’s response through word choice and structure. Analysis should name a technique, quote evidence, and explain the effect (the “what / how / why” approach).
Real number, measure and data-handling problems in a hedgehog context. Answers included.
Mummy hedgehog has some babies. Baby hedgehogs are called hoglets! 🦔🦔🦔
1. 4 2. 5 3. 2 + 3 = 5
A hedgehog can travel up to 2 km every night looking for food.
Data: a wildlife camera counted hedgehog visits each night:
| Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 4 |
1. 2 × 7 = 14 km 2. 6 × 3 = 18 spoonfuls 3. Wednesday (6) 4. 5+3+6+2+4 = 20 visits
1. (4+5+3+6+2) ÷ 5 = 20 ÷ 5 = 4 hoglets.
2. Decrease = 30m − 1m = 29m. Percentage = 29 ÷ 30 × 100 ≈ 97% decrease. (Figures are estimates used to show scale of decline.)
1. Decrease = 60. 60 ÷ 250 × 100 = 24.0%.
2. 190 × (1 − 0.24) ≈ 190 × 0.76 ≈ 144. Constant-rate is a simplification — real populations are affected by weather, food and habitat, so it’s only a rough model.
3. Parts = 3 + 5 = 8; one part = 32 ÷ 8 = 4; hoglets = 5 × 4 = 20.
Welfare-honest guidance: how to help wild hedgehogs, the myths to bust, and when to call a rescue. Never give milk or bread
Wild hedgehogs are not pets — we look, but we don’t pick them up or chase them. If we want to help, we can leave a shallow dish of water (never milk — milk makes them poorly) and keep our garden a bit wild and safe.
Kind 👍: (a) water, (d) leave it in peace. Not kind 👎: (b) milk, (c) chasing.
Like all animals, hedgehogs have basic needs: the right food, clean water, shelter and a safe place to move around. Two myths cause real harm: Myth 1 — “Give hedgehogs milk.” Hedgehogs can’t digest cow’s milk; it gives them upset tummies and can make them very ill. Myth 2 — “Bread is a good treat.” Bread fills them up but gives almost no goodness. Instead, leave water and, if you wish, a little meaty cat or dog food — and let them find their natural food of beetles, worms and slugs.
(a) MYTH — milk makes them ill. (b) TRUE. (c) MYTH — little nutrition. (d) TRUE.
Hedgehog decline has several causes: habitat loss and tidy, fenced-off gardens they can’t roam between; roads; slug pellets that poison their food; strimmers and bonfires that injure hidden hedgehogs; and ponds with steep sides they can’t climb out of. The good news is that people can help directly.
Hedgehogs travel up to ~2 km a night; sealed fences trap them in one garden with too little food and no mates. Linked gardens (“highways”) give them room to feed and breed.
A healthy hedgehog is nocturnal, so one out in daylight is a warning sign — especially if it is lying still, wobbling, or looks very small going into winter. Underweight juveniles (roughly under ~600 g in late autumn) may be too light to survive hibernation. In these cases the responsible action is to contact a local wildlife rescue or the British Hedgehog Preservation Society for advice — not to keep the animal. Wild hedgehogs should be cared for by trained rehabilitators and released back to suitable habitat. Keeping a wild hedgehog as a pet is poor welfare and, for our native species, not appropriate.
(a) Leave — normal nocturnal behaviour. (b) Get help — daytime + wobbling suggests it’s unwell; contact a rescue. (c) Leave — it is hibernating; do not disturb.
Signpost, don’t self-treat: PawSteps teaches children to observe and report, and directs to trained rescues — consistent with the platform’s “animal-first, welfare-honest” ethos.
Subject → Unit → Lesson → Activity data model from the feature-logic page so progress and reports track automatically.