Earth Hour - Short Stories for Climate

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

• creative thinking
• critical thinking
• communication
• digital literacy
• ethical understanding

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description:

Year 3 and 4, English

• plan, create, edit and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive written and multimodal texts, using visual features, appropriate form and layout, with ideas grouped in simple paragraphs, mostly correct tense, topic-specific vocabulary and correct spelling of most high-frequency and phonetically regular words (AC9E3LY06)
• plan, create, edit and publish written and multimodal imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, using visual features, relevant linked ideas, complex sentences, appropriate tense, synonyms and antonyms, correct spelling of multisyllabic words and simple punctuation (AC9E4LY076).

Relevant parts of Year 3 and 4 achievement standards: Students create written and/or multimodal texts including stories for purposes and audiences, where they develop ideas using details from learnt topics, topics of interest or texts.

NSW Syllabus outcomes:

• plans, creates and revises written texts for informative purposes, using text features, sentence-level grammar, punctuation and word-level language for a target audience (EN2-CWT-02).

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Literacy, Personal and Social Capability

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability 

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium- allow students to explore the topic independently by watching the video in the Student Worksheet and assisting student research.

UN SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

• Target 13.3: Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.

• Device capable of displaying audiovisual material
• Devices with internet access
• Student worksheet (one per student)
• Whiteboard

Earth Hour is a WWF-Australia initiative and the world’s largest community-driven climate change campaign. At the centre of Earth Hour is switching off lights to show a commitment to action. Thousands of educators use Earth Hour’s education program to enrich their curriculum and provide pathways for young people to create change in their world. For the most up-to-date Earth Hour dates, times, and events, check here.

How to Teach Sustainability With Hope

Quick Summary: This course will help you bring hope to challenging, upsetting or worrying topics around sustainability.