Clean Up Australia - Getting Involved

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

• community engagement
• communication
• creativity
• problem solving

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description: Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation - Year 3

• Foundation: the features of familiar places they belong to, why some places are special and how places can be looked after (AC9HSFK03)
• Year 1: how places change and how they can be cared for by different groups including First Nations Australians (AC9HS1K04)
• Year 2: how places can be spatially represented in geographical divisions from local to regional to state/territory, and how people and places are interconnected across those scales (AC9HS2K03)
• Year 3: why people participate within communities and how students can actively participate and contribute to communities (AC9HS3K07)

Relevant parts of Foundation - Year 3 achievement standards: 

• Foundation: Students can recognise the features of familiar places, why some places are special to people and the ways they can care for them.
• Year 1: Students can understand the ways places change, and how they can be cared for by people.
• Year 2: Students can identify how people and places are interconnected both at local and broader scales.
• Year 3: Students can describe the importance of rules and people’s contributions to communities.

NSW Syllabus outcomes: GEe-1, GE1-2, GE2-3

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability 

Level of teacher scaffolding: High - Supporting students to run their own Class Clean Up Day.

UN SDG 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

• Target 12.5: By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse

• Gloves and tongs for collecting waste
• Optional - Schools Clean Up Kit (Order through Clean Up Australia here)

This lesson was created in partnership with Clean Up Australia and its Education Partner, Unilever Australia - maker of household staples including Dove, Rexona, TRESemmé, Omo, Continental, Hellmann’s and Streets ice creams. Unilever and Clean Up Australia joined forces in 2020 to help inspire and empower Australians to clean up, fix up and conserve our environment. To learn more about the action Unilever is taking to improve the health of the planet, visit Sustainability - Planet & Society | Unilever.  

Following this lesson plan is an ideal way for your school to take part in Schools Clean Up Day or a Clean Up on any day of the year. You’ll be joining thousands of amazing teachers in making a difference and creating positive environmental change.