Gettin' on wit' it

Hey there
Ok, So I think Sam's done a great start on organising our various ideas. Three cheers for Sam!


If we just focus on before/after, what will our 'Action' be? Usually the 'Action' activity allows the students to participate in some sort of community action and allows the unit to end on a positive note. It also helps them act on what they have learnt and links it to every day life. I was thinking that this could be students informing their peers about what they can do to be more environmentally friendly at home/have less of an impact on the environment. Maybe even assess how sustainable the school and taking steps to make it better.

A number of schools undertake sustainability accreditation, but I know that's a LOT of work, not really something that a class can do by itself. At the same time, there's no reason that the class can't undertake one of the steps for it. Schools need a frog bog, or a veggie garden, they could start a recycling drive, I saw something on TV about a school that did a callout for people's grey water (after they wash their clothing/dishes/showers or whatever) and they used that water to water their gardens. They could help with a replanting somewhere, I'm pretty sure I did that at primary school, we were all bussed out to somewhere outside of Canberra and helped plant native seedlings and put milk cartons around each one to protect it. It would have been nice to hear how it went thou, I don't recall ever hearing anything about it again. I think followup is really important, so that the students can see how their actions actually make a difference.

I like the idea of the Kath Murdoch placemats, students could do different ones in pairs or individual work, and then they could be displayed up on the wall. That way everyone gets the benifit of all those ideas while still only needing to come up with a couple of their own... Ok, I didn't word that right, but whatever. It's early :)

Also, all the links you've found are great ( Catchment Detox, Recycle Zone, US EPA and stuff from arkiveeducation.org )I think that we should use them throughout the unit rather than just at the start.

When you think about it, 10 lessons isn't that much really. It's 2 lessons in each of the:
Tuning In
Finding Out
Sorting Out
Making Conclusions
Going Further


If we work on previous suggestions,

Tuning In 1: Uno's Garden and Kath Murdoch's placemat

Tuning In 2: Trip to the Museum - why aren't these animals around any more? What happened to these animals? Also, students could look at endangered animals (hello Zoo visit) (This might be too many excursions, but we could use the zoo website or something for this?) Students can pick an animal and spend some time finding out what happened to it or why it is endangered.





Finding Out 1:Activities can be related to the texts we have discussed (Uno's Garden, Animals of Farthing Wood, Jeanie Baker books etc.). These could be used to scaffold lessons about how environments have changed. Here we talk about natural habitats (Sayra's before was bush) and then what humans introduced to the environment and what they removed. Tasks like comparing pages from different sections of Uno's Garden or looking at the changes that occur throughout the pages of the Jeanie Baker books.

Finding Out 2: Story of a River (great find Sam!) activity which has clear links to Science, Humanities (Geography), English and maybe Maths - resource sheets and instructions are on the website. With this activity, students can get an understanding of how humans and what they build can impact a river. The teacher can say: 'A power station has been built near the river', the students add the appropriate ingredient (in this case vinegar) and see what happens to the water

Sorting Out 1: Mind mapping students can look at the texts from 'Tuning In' and list key words, concepts etc. Some students may choose to take photos of their 'river' or even the animals from the museum/zoo and they can visually sort out their information. KWL charts and Venn diagrams could also be used
Sorting Out 2:


Making Conclusions 1: students can research a sustainability topic...need to find a way for them to display the information that they find. (Sam, you had this in Going Further but I think it might be better in the Making Conclusions... Going Further might be the sort of 'where to from here? Now you know about these issues, what will your next action be with this knowledge?)

Making Conclusions 2: Here might be a good place for Bron's art lesson?



Going Further 1: I think that this should be looking around to local issues and doing something about those. I know that Friends of the Merri Creek go and clean out the creek and it's creek beds, that type of thing might be a good idea, or even getting the students to make posters/write letters as to why people should do that... Though again, maybe that's a Making Conclusions... Maybe they need to research their own local issue, and what they could do about it. Although a single lesson might not be very useful for that, that activity might need more. 

Going Further 2:


We also need some maths stuff in there. I think we've got English covered, and the science in Story of a River is awesome, but we're rather lacking in maths. I'm not great at thinking up maths activites...


Ok, here's a Kids Footprint website http://www.kidsfootprint.org/, unfortuntaly with this damn slow web connection I can't see it. Are there any maths stuff in there, can someone check?

Here is a Sustainability Board Game idea which is sort of maths based (sort of) http://blogadmin.oxfam.org.uk/coolplanet/teachers/globciti/lesson9.htm

A 50 years of Change in the environment lesson plan http://www.landscapesmag.com/teachers/lessonplans/50_years_of_change/50_Years...Sec_lesson_plan.pdf

I found a good idea (though it might be a little young) of being Urban Archeologists, where students go out and in a metre square (or something) find all the rubbish, plastic, glass, whatever, and next lesson they have to graph the results, but the damn browser crashed and I can't find it again (bangs head on desk repeatedly) Ahh! Ok, it's here http://www.gosmartpay.com/files/smartpay_tigertheme3.pdf but I can't download it cause it's 4meg. Damn internet! If I connected my freakin' bike to it, it'd run faster... Can someone download it and copy the god bits out or something? See if it's appropriate?

There's heaps of great lessons here (more for future resource than right now) http://www.learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?pid=35982


If there';s no suitable maths lessons in there, tell me and I'll continue the hunt, maybe on a different connection!

Sayra