Conservation Through Art

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

• creative thinking
• critical thinking
• communication

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description:

Year 3 & 4, Visual Arts

• Students learn to explore where, why and how visual arts are created and/or presented across cultures, times, places and/or other contexts (AC9AVA4E01)
• Students learn to use visual conventions, visual arts processes and materials to create artworks that communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning (AC9AVA4C01)

Relevant parts of Year 3 & 4 achievement standards: Students describe use of elements, concepts and/or conventions in arts works they create and/or experience. They describe where, why and/or how arts works are created and presented across cultures, times and/or places, and/or other contexts. Students use arts knowledge and skills to create arts works in a range of forms that communicate ideas, perspectives and/or meaning. 

NSW Syllabus outcomes:

A student

• makes artworks using art forms to represent subject matter and ideas, and describes ways artists convey ideas about their world to audiences through artworks (CA2-VIS-01)

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Literacy

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability 

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium - lead students in class discussions and poster analysis, and support students in creating their artworks.

UN SDG 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

• Target 15.5: Take urgent and significant action to reduce the degradation of natural habitats, halt the loss of biodiversity and, by 2020, protect and prevent the extinction of threatened species.

• African Lion Fact Sheet 
• Mandrill Fact Sheet 
• Warthog Fact Sheet 
• Hornbill Fact Sheet 
• Meerkat Fact Sheet 
• Movie Posters Visual Explainer
• Poster-making materials

Since Disney released The Lion King, in 1994 and the world fell in love with its story of adventure, friendship, and family on the savanna, Africa has lost half of its lions.

In 2019, Disney released the groundbreaking live-action adaptation of The Lion King and teamed up with the Wildlife Conservation Network’s Lion Recovery Fund and its partners to help bring back lions in the wild. Through this collaboration, Disney and the Wildlife Conservation Network’s Lion Recovery Fund encouraged audiences to “Protect the Pride,” urging fans and wildlife lovers around the world to participate in the conservation of lions and their habitats and help support local people who live alongside lions.

Now, five years later, with the release of Mufasa: The Lion King in theatres on December 19, Disney and the Lion Recovery Fund are teaming up again to continue efforts to Protect the Pride, celebrate successes to date, and grow hope for a future where lions and people thrive.

Find out more about how you can Protect the Pride here (disney.com.au/mufasa-the-lion-king-protect-the-pride).

Cool.org would like to extend our thanks to the Lion Recovery Fund and the Zambian Carnivore Programme (zambiacarnivores.org/programme) for their contribution of data, imagery and stories from the field to bring these resources to life. The Zambian Carnivore Programme (ZCP) is a Zambian-registered non-profit organisation dedicated to conserving large carnivores and the ecosystems they reside in through a combination of conservation science, conservation actions, and a comprehensive education and capacity-building effort. We would particularly like to thank PhD candidates Anna Kusler and Johnathan Reyes de Merkle and wish them the best of luck with their continued research.

Using the Cool.org Act Framework in the Classroom - Primary

Quick Summary: Taking action on issues that are important to young people is an important way to give students a sense of hope for their futures. However, Cool.org recognises that supporting students to take meaningful action can be daunting, which is why we've created the Cool.org Act Framework.

The Cool.org Act Framework provides strategies and tactics for enabling action at a range of levels and configurations. This Course explains how to use our Framework with your students and provides examples of action-based resources from Cool.org and others that you can use to bring action into your classroom.