Classes were cancelled at a school near Oxford as pupils went back to nature to learn more about the environment.

Pupils at Matthew Arnold School, in Cumnor Hill, took part in a series of events designed to get them thinking about the environment and the issues facing the planet on Friday.

Teresa Hirst, head of biology at the school and one of the organisers of the day, said it had been an enormous success as pupils came face to face with wallabies, hedgehogs, snakes and meerkats.

She said: "It was an amazing day and the students really enjoyed seeing the animals.

"They were learning about how humans are having an impact on their environments and the problems they are facing. We started the day with a talk by Sue Rosier from ClimatePrediction.net, who talked about using super computers to model the way climate change is going, which was quite scary because even if we manage to stabilise CO2 output, we are still going to get global warming in the future.

"I think a lot of the children came away from that quite stunned."

Other events included designing wind turbines, conducting an environmental assessment of the area around the school and pupils calculating their carbon footprints.

Ms Hirst said: "There were no lessons for any of the students on Friday and they all got involved in this.

"It's great for them to learn more. They need to be aware of it and how they can do things to make a difference and who and what is being affected by it.

"They can then maybe take the message home with them as well and talk to their parents about what they have learnt. Just a small difference can surely help the bigger picture."

Stephen Rowlands from Tropicalinc.com, a Birmingham-based company that tours schools around the country showing animals to pupils, said: "Showing the animals to the children really brings to life the issues they are all facing.

"The response I got was great and they all the chance to touch, stroke, smell the animals, if they really wanted to. It's not your typical show-and-tell."

Mr Rowlands said he gave the pupils the chance to see the most dangerous animal in the world.

He said: "I have a box that has danger and caution signs all over. When I open it up they look inside and there is a mirror.

"We are the most dangerous animal because we are the ones causing all of the problems to the environment and the animals' habitats."