Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes – Part A: Introduction – What Is The Issue?
25 minutes – Part B: How Can We Improve Donation Rates?
30 minutes – Part C: Spreading Awareness
5 minutes – Reflection

Part A: Introduction – What Is The Issue?

Step 1.

Introduce the lesson by informing students that they will be investigating organ and tissue donation and transplantation data to help understand the complexities of the issue in Australia. Assure the class that if they’re not familiar with the topic, that’s ok – they’ll have the opportunity to become more informed about the topic throughout this lesson.

Step 2.

Hand out a copy of the Student Worksheet to each student. Explain to students that the following clip, 'Allan's Story' is from the documentary Dying to Live. While watching the clip, ask students to take notes on anything they find important or interesting.

Dying to Live: Allan's Story (https://youtu.be/BqA3cMc1c7g)

Step 3.

After watching the clip, invite students to participate in a Think-Pair-Share visible thinking routine to explore Allan’s story and how they feel about about organ and tissue donation. Ask students to access the Student Worksheet and encourage them to:

THINK: Spend a minute writing down what they found interesting from the clip and how they felt about Allan’s story and organ and tissue donation. Encourage all students to write down something in the space provided on the Student Worksheet. These ideas can be listed words, dot points or more detailed sentences.

PAIR: Once everyone has had a chance to record some ideas individually, invite students to share what they have written down with a partner or in a small group.

SHARE: Invite students to contribute to a class discussion with all ideas being written on the whiteboard.

Step 4.

Now project the chart below for the class to see (also available on the Student Worksheet and by clicking here). The chart compares Australia’s organ donation rate to the world-leading rate. The units on this chart are donations per million of the population, with Australia’s rate at 20.7 dpmp. On the right hand side, it also outlines how many additional Australians would receive a transplant if our national donation rate was in line the the world-leading rate.

Using this chart as stimulus, ask your class to complete a 3-2-1 thinking routine on the Student Worksheet whereby they should produce:

3 thoughts
2 questions
1 action idea (i.e. what could we do to improve?)

If your students are struggling to interpret the chart, you might like to point out the following:

For every million people in Australia, 20.7 donations are received.
Australia is rated about 17th in the world for donation rate.
Spain and Croatia are the current world leaders for donations with rates of 43.8 and 39.5 dpmp respectively.
If Australia’s donation rate was as high as Spain’s, an additional 1500 Australians would receive transplants per year. Given that 1402 Australians received a transplant in 2017, this would double the number of recipients.

Part B: How Can We Improve Donation Rates?

Step 1.

Hand out a copy of the Scatterplot Worksheet to each student. Draw students' attention to the two tables on the first page of the Scatterplot Worksheet – Number of Transplants in Australia and Number of Transplants in Spain.

Step 2.

Ask students to calculate the Transplants per Million of the Population (TPMP) for each country using the relevant data from the two tables. Students will firstly need to find the number of donors and then divide it by the population in millions for each year. The answers need to be included in the end column.

Note: The solution tables have been included in the Scatterplot Overview and Solutions Factsheet.

Step 3.

Once the transplant data has been calculated for both countries, explain to students that they will need to produce a scatterplot for both countries on the same graph. Each country will need to be represented using a different colour.

Step 4.

When both countries' data has been added to the scatterplot, ask students to plot an approximate line of best fit.

Step 5.

Now that students are aware of the comparison between Australia and Spain’s transplant rates, draw students' attention to the the second two tables of the Scatterplot Worksheet – Number of Donors in Australia and Number of Donors in Spain.

Step 6.

Ask students to calculate the Donors per Million of the Population (TPMP) for each country and then create a scatterplot with a line of best fit.

Note: Solution tables and example scatterplots have been included in the Scatterplot Overview and Solutions Factsheet.

Part C: Explanation Game

Step 1.

Provide each student with a copy of the article titled 'Spain is the undisputed world leader in organ transplants'. Read though the article as a class and encourage students to highlight and make notes of the main ideas as it is read.

Step 2.

Once the class has finished reading, ask students to share the main ideas from the article by completing the visual thinking routine ‘Explanation Game’.

The Explanation Game begins with one student creating a sentence that starts with “I notice that...”. This statement is then followed with a question about what they noticed. For example, “I notice that Spain has an ‘opt-out’ system for organ and tissue donation. Why is this different to Australia?”

Step 3.

Invite students to create their "I notice that..." statements and questions about the article on the Student Worksheet.

Step 4.

Call for volunteers to share "I notice that..." statements and questions to promote a class discussion and try to answer the questions. Encourage the person asking the original question to follow up by asking, "What makes you think so?" This will help promote deeper thought about the issue and build stronger explanations.

Explore the main points of the article listed below:

Medical professionals are trained to recognise donation opportunities outside of intensive care, emergency departments or hospital wards. This means that all possible donors are managed in a way to ensure donation can occur.
Spain accepts donors over the age of 65 – 10% of donors are 80 years or over. Australia has no age-limit on donors.
Spain considers donation from circulatory deaths that occur outside of hospital, if viable. The majority of donations in Australia have come from donors who have died due to brain death whereas circulatory deaths generally do not lead to donations. Australia will only accept donations from donors who died in hospital, to ensure maintenance of the organs.
Spain uses an opt-out process for organ donation, which means that everyone is listed as a potential donor unless they actively register to opt-out. Australia uses an opt-in scheme, where people need to actively register to become an organ donor.

Part D: Spreading Awareness

Step 1.

Explain to your class that they will now use the donation rate data, their scatterplots and the case study of Spain as evidence to create an awareness poster about organ and tissue donation in Australia. This task can be completed as an individual, in a pair or small group. Depending on how much time you have, other resources are available in the Organ and Tissue Donation Resources Factsheet that could be used to investigate the issue further.

Step 2.

Provide students with poster paper or access to a digital alternative (e.g. Canva, Adobe Spark) and explain that the poster needs to meet their selected target audience. This could be decided as a class or as individuals. For example, to be displayed around the school, or as a poster in a bus stop shelter. The awareness poster should:

Justify why Australia needs to improve organ donation rates (encourage students to use their scatterplots and data as evidence in their justification).
Explain how Australia could improve organ and tissue donation rates (depending on how knowledgeable students are about organ and tissue donation, further research may be needed, and the Organ and Tissue Donation Resources Factsheet will help direct students to useful resources).
Recommend the best method for Australia to improve organ donation rates and describe what can be done to save more lives.
Communicate the findings to a selected audience.

Step 3.

On completion of this task, work with students to create a gallery walk of student work:

Reflection

Step 1.

Ask students to reflect on their learning throughout the lesson by completing the following sentence stems on the Student Worksheet. Encourage students to provide detail and examples to support their thinking:

I used to think…
Now I think….

Differentiated Learning

Extension – This lesson could be extended by encouraging your class to make several recommendations and/or assess the depth of their recommendations through further data analysis. An example of this might include a recommendation for Australia to adopt an opt-out strategy, paired with a statistical analysis that indicates the success rates of opt-out policies in other countries.

Provisions for Learning Support – Depending on the support requirements of individual students in your class, it may be beneficial for students to create the awareness posters in groups of mixed ability.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Dying to Live - Comparing Scatterplots

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