Supporting Sustainable Food

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

• communication
• community engagement
• creativity
• critical thinking
• digital literacy
• social skills

Australian curriculum content descriptions: 

Year 9 Geography:

• Challenges to food production, including land and water degradation, shortage of fresh water, competing land uses, and climate change, for Australia and other areas of the world (ACHGK063).
• The capacity of the world’s environments to sustainably feed the projected future global population (ACHGK064).

Year 10 Geography:

• Human-induced environmental changes that challenge sustainability (ACHGK070).
• Environmental world views of people and their implications for environmental management (ACHGK071).
• The application of systems thinking to understand the causes and likely consequences of the environmental change being investigated (ACHGK073).

Syllabus outcomes: GE5-2, GE5-3, GE5-4, GE5-5

General capabilities:  Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability, Literacy, Critical and Creative Thinking

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability 

Relevant parts of Year 9 achievement standards: Students analyse interconnections between people, places and environments and explain how these interconnections influence people, and change places and environments. Students analyse alternative strategies to a geographical challenge using environmental, social and economic criteria. Students synthesise data and information to draw reasoned conclusions.

Relevant parts of Year 10 achievement standards: Students explain how interactions between geographical processes at different scales change the characteristics of places. Students identify, analyse and explain significant interconnections between people, places and environments and explain changes that result from these interconnections and their consequences.

Unit of work: Love Food? Love Bees! – Food Security and Sustainability – Year 9 & 10

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – a modelled Inquiry is built into the lesson. Students may also need to be guided through the use of an infographic-created software.

Goal 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.

• Student Worksheet – one copy per student
• A printed class set, or ability to project, the Infographic Assessment Rubric
• Enough internet enabled-devices to facilitate paired work and the use of the program, Piktochart

This lesson has been created in partnership with ACT for Bees. ACT for Bees is a not-for-profit organisation taking action to preserve these essential pollinators, ensuring a food-secure future.

How To Teach Sustainability With Hope

Quick summary: This course is for both primary and secondary teachers of all subjects, but especially for English, Science, Humanities and Geography teachers who are covering climate change and the cross-curriculum priority of sustainability.