Lesson summary
This lesson forms part of a Design Thinking Unit in which students identify issues relating to recycling, build an understanding of the impact that not recycling can have in their own community, work to find and prototype a solution, then take action in their community that addresses the issues they have identified. In this lesson, students will share findings relating to the community’s experiences with waste and recycling. They will present data and information as graphs and tables, as well as summarising it into a visual organiser to represent what members of the community see, do, think and feel. They then consider this information to generate ideas about how recycling practices could be improved.
Learning intentions:
Students will...
- understand and become familiar with proper recycling habits
- be able to calculate and apply percentages to solve problems related to recycling (focus for Years 7 and 8)
- understand how to collect and use data to solve problems related to recycling (focus for Years 9 and 10)
- understand the effects of sending recyclable material to landfill
Success criteria:
Students can...
- identify the recyclable materials they are using on an average day
- calculate percentages, averages and proportions in a problem-solving context
Lesson guides and printables
Lesson details
Curriculum mapping
To view our Australian Curriculum alignment click here.
To view our NZ Curriculum alignment click here.
Unit of work: Visy Education – Using Design Thinking to Solve Problems – Year 5 & 6.
Time required: 120 mins.
Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – tasks within the Design Thinking Unit are designed to encourage students to work independently and in groups to develop their own ideas and actions. The teacher will need to observe and monitor groups, conferencing when suitable and providing support to interpret and present data and plan and implement actions.
Resources required
- Device capable of presenting a video to the class
- Design Thinking Workbook (one per student, retained from previous lessons)
- Sticky notes
- Basic craft materials, including white and coloured paper, pencils, markers, sticky tape, glue and scissors
- Blu-Tac to display completed posters, or pins if placing posters on display boards
- Class Action Planner
- Gripes posters, retained from the Discovering the Waste Problem lesson
Skills
This lesson is designed to build students’ competencies in the following skills:
- Collaboration
- Community engagement
- Critical thinking
- Empathy
- Enterprise
- Ethical understanding
- Global citizenship
- Leadership
- Social skills
- Problem solving
Additional info
This lesson has been developed in partnership with Visy. For over 70 years Visy has been committed to finding sustainable solutions for Australia and New Zealand’s recyclables and helping to reduce local landfills. Visy collects, receives and sorts paper, cardboard, glass, plastics, steel and aluminium from households, businesses and schools with the purpose of reusing these products in the re-manufacture of new packaging products.
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