Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes

Tune in: About conservation

15 minutes

Find out: What is the 30 x 30 initiative?

25 minutes

Take action: Understanding stakeholders

Tune in: About conservation

Step 1

Students are to write a definition and key facts for ‘conservation’ in their vocabulary banks. Please explain that for the purposes of this course, we're referring to environmental or nature focused conservation.

Conservation: prevention of wasteful use of a natural resource.

Key facts:

Earth’s natural resources include air, minerals, plants, soil, water, and wildlife.
Conservation includes maintaining diversity of species, genes, and ecosystems, as well as functions of the environment.
Conservation seeks the sustainable use of nature by humans.

Step 2

Explain that the ocean, seas and waterways in this sense are ‘resources’. When we talk about ‘conservation’ of the ocean, we are actually having a conversation about how to protect it and the life that lives in it. If we manage to protect the oceans, it also leads to great benefits for us.

Watch clips -

Blueback - Abby and Dora climb aboard reef stripping boat (vimeo.com/794748170)

Blueback - Dora Jackson has a marine park created in her name (vimeo.com/794748775)

Discuss-

What does Dora want to stop Costello from doing specifically?
What does it mean for the ocean and the community who live in Longboat Bay, when it is set up as a Marine Protected Area?

Find Out: What is the 30 x 30 initiative?

Step 1

Explain that there is a global target to adequately protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030: this is often referred to as 30 x 30. To learn more about 30 x 30, students need to perform some research.

Step 2

For context, have students watch two clips from Blue Nature Alliance.

Blue Nature Alliance- Our Ocean (youtu.be/2azcE02AfWM)

Blue Nature Alliance - Conserving our ocean (youtu.be/ocT1_ARun4E)

Step 3

Provide students with the Understanding 30 x 30 Worksheet . It looks similar to this brainstorming tool below.

A brainstorming tool with five threads and bubbles of focus

Step 4

Encourage students to make preliminary notes in Who, When, Where, Why, What segments of the brainstorming map based on what they saw in the two Blue Nature Alliance clips.

Step 5

Direct students to navigate through Blue Nature Alliance's website (bluenaturealliance.org/). As they explore the website and links, they should be able to uncover information for each of the focus areas of the brainstorming map above. Students are to practice their note taking. They should create dot points and write notes for each section. Eg. For ‘What’ - conserving 30% of the global ocean.

Extension

For students who complete this task early, direct them to the High Ambition Coalition’s website (hacfornatureandpeople.org/home). They may be able to find additional information for their brainstorming map - and gain a stronger understanding that there are various organisations and bodies involved in 30 x 30.

Take action: Understanding stakeholders

Step 1

Discuss:

What decisions need to be made in order to properly protect marine environments?

Step 2

Watch (up until 1:54)

An ingenious proposal for scaling up marine protection | The Nature Conservancy - TED (youtube.com/watch?v=ttcJMNlKif4&t=26s).

This video provides a good overview of what needs to be considered when setting up a Marine Protected Area and how different stakeholders will have varying opinions on how to protect marine areas.

Step 3.

Students complete Understanding Stakeholders Worksheet (available as Student Worksheet). Prompt students to look at the table and to think about what actions would be reasonable to take to help protect the ocean. Independently, students sort the following options into ‘Good ideas’, ‘Have potential’ and ‘Bad ideas’ (or however the teacher wishes to term them), in terms of actions we could take to protect Marine Protected Areas. They can cross out options they consider unreasonable, put a question mark to ones they're not sure about and highlight or put a tick next to options they think may work.

Some of the options are extreme, others are just ineffective.

We should ban fishing altogether	We should criminalise fishing endangered species	We should police fishing boats more closely
We should make people pay to use beaches, jetties etc to fish	We should have more strict registration processes for fishing vehicles	We should give out free bag and size limit information cards
We should have regular clean up days (plastic / marine debris clean up)	We should go to the government with a proposed plan to protect marine areas	We should hold community forums so we can make decisions about marine environs together
We should regularly protest to save the oceans	We should educate ourselves and others about the marine environs we want to protect	We should stop eating seafood

Step 4

As a class, discuss:

Which options seem the most reasonable? Why?
Which options seem totally unreasonable? Why?

Is it enough - will the options they’re left with, if followed, be enough to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030?

Differentiated learning

We trust that teachers are the best equipped to know how to cater to the diversity in their classes. At Cool Australia, we incorporate a variety of differentiation strategies into each lesson. Firstly, each lesson in this unit appeals to an array different learning preferences. Learning activities can be completed in a number of different ways - if a student feels more comfortable speaking rather than writing, there are opportunities to accommodate this. In lessons that feature group work or learning stations, we trust that teachers will use their discretion in knowing how to best organise their students in accordance to positive working relationships and ability. Graphic organisers and scaffolds are often included so students can ‘visually think’ and keep a record of their work. While our lessons are designed to be 55 - 60 minutes in length, we trust that teachers will manipulate lesson and segment times according to the needs of their students.

Blueback - We Need To Protect 30% of Our Oceans by 2030

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