Schools around the world inspired by Charles Darwin:

Verevo Comprehensive Schoolin St Petersburg, Russia.

"The students had to be brave not to be scared of the worms, spiders and beetles," says Irina Ovsyannikova, teacher at Verevo Comprehensive.

Looking closely at the creepy-crawlies around the school in St Petersburg, Irina's students were amazed to discover that woodlice are related to trilobites, which lived hundreds of millions of years ago.

"When observing the fossils and the woodlice we looked for common traits," explains Ms Ovsyannikova. "The findings made the children really excited!"

Ms Ovsyannikova introduced the children to the theory of evolution on a visit to the Moscow Darwin Museum. "The students found out that species can change with time. So the dinosaurs that they'd seen in cartoons and comics took their place in the evolution process!"

Back in St Petersburg, the class watched plants, animals and birds and shared their observations with their international partner school, Buildwas Primary in the UK.

"Our Shropshire linking school sent us the English names of the birds. We first translated the names into Latin and this helped us to find the Russian translations for the words."

Once they'd translated the unfamiliar bird names, the children were surprised to discover that bullfinches, blackbirds, sparrows and pigeons are common in both St Petersburg and Shropshire.

The two schools enjoyed sharing photos online. "The children from Verevo were really surprised to see the English school students wearing the same shirts and sweaters in January and in May. Here in Russia, children wore fur coats in winter and then t-shirts at the end of the project!"

Read more stories from schools inspired by Darwin