Visy Education - Understanding the Waste Problem

Australian Curriculum content description:

Year 5 English

• Understand how to move beyond making bare assertions and take account of differing perspectives and points of view (ACELA1502).
• Clarify understanding of content as it unfolds in formal and informal situations, connecting ideas to students’ own experiences and present and justify a point of view (ACELY1699).

Year 6 English

• Participate in and contribute to discussions, clarifying and interrogating ideas, developing and supporting arguments, sharing and evaluating information, experiences and opinions (ACELY1709).

Year 5 Humanities and Social Sciences

• Develop appropriate questions to guide an inquiry about people, events, developments, places, systems and challenges (ACHASSI094).
• Locate and collect relevant information and data from primary sources and secondary sources (ACHASSI095).
• Organise and represent data in a range of formats including tables, graphs and large- and small-scale maps, using discipline-appropriate conventions (ACHASSI096).
• How people with shared beliefs and values work together to achieve a civic goal (ACHASSK118).
• Evaluate evidence to draw conclusions (ACHASSI101).
• Work in groups to generate responses to issues and challenges (ACHASSI102)

Year 6 Humanities and Social Sciences

• Develop appropriate questions to guide an inquiry about people, events, developments, places, systems and challenges (ACHASSI122).
• Locate and collect relevant information and data from primary sources and secondary sources (ACHASSI123).
• Evaluate evidence to draw conclusions (ACHASSI129).
• Work in groups to generate responses to issues and challenges (ACHASSI130).
• Reflect on learning to propose personal and/or collective action in response to an issue or challenge, and predict the probable effects (ACHASSI132).
• The obligations citizens may consider they have beyond their own national borders as active and informed global citizens (ACHASSK148).

Year 5 Mathematics

• Pose questions and collect categorical or numerical data by observation or survey (ACMSP118).
• Construct displays, including column graphs, dot plots and tables, appropriate for data type, with and without the use of digital technologies (ACMSP119).
• Describe and interpret different data sets in context (ACMSP120).

Year 6 Mathematics

• Interpret and compare a range of data displays, including side-by-side column graphs for two categorical variables (ACMSP147).

Year 5 and 6 Design and Technologies

• Critique needs or opportunities for designing, and investigate materials, components, tools, equipment and processes to achieve intended designed solutions (ACTDEP024).
• Generate, develop and communicate design ideas and processes for audiences using appropriate technical terms and graphical representation techniques (ACTDEP025).

Relevant parts of Year 5 English achievement standards: Students listen and ask questions to clarify content.

Relevant parts of Year 6 English achievement standards: Students listen to discussions, clarifying content and challenging others’ ideas.

Relevant parts of Year 5 HASS achievement standards: Students describe the significance of people and events/developments in bringing about change. They identify and describe the interconnections between people and the human and environmental characteristics of places, and between components of environments. Students develop questions for an investigation. They locate and collect data and information from a range of sources to answer inquiry questions. They interpret data to identify and describe distributions, simple patterns and trends, and to infer relationships, and suggest conclusions based on evidence. They work with others to generate alternative responses to an issue or challenge and reflect on their learning to independently propose action, describing the possible effects of their proposed action. They present their ideas, findings and conclusions in a range of communication forms using discipline-specific terms and appropriate conventions.

Relevant parts of Year 6 HASS achievement standards: Students develop appropriate questions to frame an investigation. They locate and collect useful data and information from primary and secondary sources. They collaboratively generate alternative responses to an issue, use criteria to make decisions and identify the advantages and disadvantages of preferring one decision over others. They reflect on their learning to propose action in response to an issue or challenge and describe the probable effects of their proposal. They present ideas, findings, viewpoints and conclusions in a range of communication forms that incorporate source materials, mapping, graphing, communication conventions and discipline-specific terms.

Relevant parts of Year 5 Mathematics achievement standards: Students interpret different data sets. Students pose questions to gather data, and construct data displays appropriate for the data.

Relevant parts of Year 6 Mathematics achievement standards: Students interpret and compare a variety of data displays including those displays for two categorical variables. They interpret secondary data displayed in the media.

Relevant parts of Year 5 and 6 Design and Technologies standards: Students describe a range of needs, opportunities or problems and define them in terms of functional requirements. They collect and validate data from a range of sources to assist in making judgements.

General capabilities: Literacy, Numeracy, Personal and Social Capability, Critical and Creative Thinking, Personal and Social Capability, Information Communication and Technology Capability, Ethical Understanding.

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability OI.1, OI.2, OI.3, OI.4, OI.5, OI.6, OI.7, OI.8, OI.9.

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 appropriate and providing support to interpret and present data and plan and implement actions.

• Device capable of presenting a video to the class.
• Design Thinking Workbook (one per student, retained from the previous lesson)
• Example Empathy Map
• Example poster

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

• Collaboration
• Communication
• Community engagement
• Critical thinking
• Empathy
• Ethical understanding
• Global citizenship
• Social skills

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.