Education for sustainability linking to both Geography and Civics and Citizenship
Dear year 4 parents/carers,
I am writing to share with you about what our children will learn in Humanities and Social Science learning area in this term.
This term we will focus on sustainability, which is one of the cross-curriculum priorities in Australian Curriculum. Education for sustainability could lead the young Australians to develop an overall capability to contribute to a more sustainable future for present and future generations (Hopper, Cutter-Mackenzie & Gilbert, 2017). In order to facilitate the students to develop their knowledge about sustainability and become active and informed citizens, I have designed a unit of work which could achieve the learning outcomes in both geography and civics and citizenship (Figure1, 2 &3).
Figure 1 (ACHASSK090, Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2016).
Figure 2 (ACHASSK091, [ACARA], 2016)
Figure 3 (Inquiry and skills, [ACARA], 2016)
Firstly, I will show a picture (Figure 4) to the students and ask these questions:
What is shown in the picture?
What will happen to the ocean creatures in the picture?
What caused the phenomenon?
What can we, as citizens, do to deal with this problem?
The students will think about these questions by themselves, and then the class will be divided into several small groups to discuss their thoughts, finally they will share what they come up with as a whole class. This strategy is called Think-Pair-Share (TPS), which is a collaborative learning strategy that the teacher often use to let the students work together to solve problems (AdLit.org, 2019). Meanwhile, questioning is a central tool that the teachers use to stimulate students’ higher-order thinking skills and engage the students with the learning (Marsh, Clarke & Pittaway, 2014).
Figure 4 (Xing, 2016)
Next, I will put the activity ‘Waste NoT Awards’ on board. This is an activity held by the Northern Tasmanian Waste Management Groups to recognise and reward people’s efforts for re-thinking their waste and improving their waste management practices (City of Launceston, 2019). They will do their projects in groups and apply the award on 1 July 2019. Their final products could be regarded as the summative assessment task of this unit of work.
Figure 5 (City of Launceston, 2019)
After illustrating the goal they need to achieve, the students are starting to investigate and explore the knowledge and skills they need. For example, I might ask the students to bring different waste from home and discuss which item is recycled and which one is not, and the reason. I hope you can help your child to prepare the waste, the more kinds of waste, the better. In this process, the students could apply their ICT skills to search from internet to get a better understanding about the waste categories. In addition, I might show the students a website (https://www.samedayrubbishremoval.com.au/War-On-Waste-Statistics.php) where they can browse to know how bad Australia’s waste problem is. I suggest you have a look at this website as well to share your thought with your child. There are a lot of incredible statistics worth discussing and reflecting in that article. Furthermore, I may play this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L80NYz2OZ4c) to spark the students’ ideas about what they can do to save water or other natural resources. Most importantly, I may arrange a day tour to the Launceston city council or invite an officer to the classroom to introduce the students about what role of the government plays on sustainability.
I believe, through this unit of work, the students could get better understanding about the environment we are living in and what we can do to protect it as active and informed citizens. Meanwhile, the students could improve their general capabilities including ICT capability, critical and creative thinking, personal and social capability and ethical understanding through investigating the problem and creating projects to enhance sustainability.
References
AdLit.org. (2019). Classroom Strategies: Think-Pair-Share. Retrieved from http://www.adlit.org/strategies/23277/
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority ([ACARA], 2016). Australian Curriculum. Retrieved form https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/humanities-and-social-sciences/hass/
City of Launceston. (2019). Sustainability. Retrieved from https://www.launceston.tas.gov.au/Natural-Environment-and-Waste/Sustainability#section-6
Hopper, B., Cutter-Mackenzie, A., & Gilbert, R. (2017). Sustainability. In Gilbert & Hoepper (Ed.), Teaching Humanities and Social Sciences: History, Geography, Economics and Citizenship (6th ed.)(pp. 428-457). Southbank, VIC: Cengage Learning.
Jamaya, B. (2014). Kitchen water recycling for garden [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L80NYz2OZ4c
Marsh, C., Clarke, M., & Pittaway, S. (2014). Marsh’s becoming a teacher (6th ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson.
Xing, R. (2016). Plastic world, plastic nightmare. Retrieved from http://blog.nus.edu.sg/plasticworld/2016/08/23/impacts-of-plastic-pollution-on-marine-environment-in-progress/
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteYou have some great ideas about learning activities that students can do to learn about sustainability. Here are some suggestions:
1. Even though we have to spend a lot of time thinking about the Australian Curriculum content descriptors, parents don't really care about them. They just would prefer for teachers to say in plain language what their child will be learning. For this reason, I think the images of the Australian Curriculum content would be better to go down the bottom of your post (so that they satisfy the requirements of the assessment task but don't feature as the first thing a parent would see.
2. Parents also want to hear that you are confident, so when you say something like "I might..." or "I may..." it sounds to the parent like you haven't planned properly or you are unsure of what you will do. You can replace all of these with "I will..." to sound confident and organised.
3. I think the Geography element of your learning sequence could be made more explicit in your explanation. What are the geography elements of your learning activities, or what is the geographical thinking that the students will be learning/using?
Nice work on this blog post and I'm looking forward to seeing the final product.
Warm regards,
Lea
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHi Lea,
DeleteThank you very much for your feedback. I have changed "I might..." and "I may..." to "I will...".
Kind regards
Mary
Hi Mary,
ReplyDeleteI think you have some good learning experience to teaching Geography and what people can do to manage the environment and their waste.
I agree with Lea that there is a lot of focus at the beginning of the blog on the content descriptors. You can still have the images with the links to the curriculum, but I think you also need to simply say what the students will be learning about (e.g. managing waste).
I also think you need to have the picture before the questions. So, instead of saying “I will show a picture (figure 4) and ask these questions” you could say “I will show the students the following picture” – then put the picture.
Personally, I would not in-text reference this much for parents (e.g. in-text referencing images). I understand it is APA referencing and we are constantly taught about referencing, but we need to think of this as a blog for the parents. It is a personal choice however, and if you feel more comfortable having the references in there then that is obviously up to you, but just thought I would mention it.
I also agree with Lea that ‘I may’ and ‘I might’ should be reworded to “I will”.
Overall, I think you have done a good job.
Kind Regards,
Sophie
Thank you for your feedback Sophie.
Delete