Blue - Experiencing the Ocean

This lesson is designed to build students’ competencies in the following skills:

• communication
• creativity
• critical thinking
• global citizenship
• social skills

Australian curriculum (8.4) content descriptions:

Year 8 English:

• Investigate how visual and multimodal texts allude to or draw on other texts or images to enhance and layer meaning (ACELA1548).
• Explore the interconnectedness of Country/Place, People, Identity and Culture in texts including those by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors (ACELT1806).
• Recognise and explain differing viewpoints about the world, cultures, individual people and concerns represented in texts (ACELT1807).

Syllabus outcomes: EN4-6C, EN4-8D.

General capabilities: Literacy, Critical and Creative Thinking

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability

Relevant parts of Year 8 English achievement standards: Students create texts for different purposes, selecting language to influence audience response. They make presentations and contribute actively to class and group discussions, using language patterns for effect. Students demonstrate understanding of grammar, select vocabulary for effect and use accurate spelling and punctuation.

Unit of work: Blue The Film: Our Oceans and Our Future

Time required: 60 mins.

• Student Worksheet – one per student
• Device capable of presenting a website, clip and digital worksheet to the class
• The Ocean Stimulus Images

Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

• Target 14.1: By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Low – lead students in discussion.

Blue is a feature documentary film charting the drastic decline in the health of our oceans. With more than half of all marine life lost and the expansion of the industrialization of the seas, the film sets out the challenges we are facing and the opportunities for positive change. Blue changes the way we think about our liquid world and inspires the audience to action. Find out how to screen or download the film here. Along with the film is an ambitious global campaign to create advocacy and behaviour change through the #oceanguardian movement. To become an ocean guardian, see the website.

How To Teach Sustainability With Hope

Quick summary: This course is for both primary and secondary teachers of all subjects, but especially for English, Science, Humanities and Geography teachers who are covering climate change and the cross-curriculum priority of sustainability.