Teaching Sequence

10 minutes	Part A: How Might We Take Action?
15 minutes	Part B: Ideation - 50 Ideas in 5 Minutes
35 minutes	Part C: Project Planning

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

Introduction

This lesson is all about supporting students to apply what they have learnt throughout the unit through a real and meaningful social action project. They will collaboratively plan and execute an action that supports their school or community in promoting positive and meaningful understanding of the different stories of seeking asylum that exist in the local, national and global community.

Within many communities there are organisations and advocacy groups working with refugees and people seeking asylum - most provide resources and information around the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees and highlight the positive contributions made by this group to local and national communities. This lesson encourages students to seek out these organisations and community groups for inspiration or connection to an existing project through which they can take positive social action. When considering some of these project ideas, encourage students to think about your unique school community and the resources that are available to support and capture their enthusiasm for taking positive social action through their project.

Before commencing the project planning phase of this lesson, foreshadow with students that each group member should take responsibility for collecting evidence that shows the work that they put into the project; including artifacts such as plans, drafts, prototypes, etc. of everything they create as part of the project as well as records of any opportunities they pursue (either successfully or unsuccessfully). An important thing for students to remember throughout this project is that the PROCESS of completing the project is equally as valuable as the project outcome for their learning. Students should aim to demonstrate the growth and learning that they experience both personally and as a group as a result of facing the challenges inherent in a project of this type.

In this lesson students will be asked to:

Think about what they care about
Develop a range of ideas for taking action
Select one idea for taking action
Plan a project around this idea
Execute the project
Reflect on the success of their project and celebrate their efforts

This lesson has been created in a way that assumes that one class will work in small groups to take different actions in their local community to address the same issue - however it is possible for the class to work as one larger group to carry out one social action project.

Part A: How Might We Take Action?

Step 1.

Talk about asylum-seeking and offshore detention. When discussing these topics with students, a good place to start might be to talk about key terms such as tolerance, respect, harmony, justice, fear, hope, acceptance, belonging, difference and understanding.

Ask students to reflect on their own relationships with friends and family by asking:

What are the ingredients of a good relationship?
What contributes to a strong sense of community?
How do you know if you belong to a community?
How does it feel when you know you belong or fit in?
What makes you feel pride (both in yourself and those around you) and what happens when you feel disrespected?
What do you do to build trust in your personal relationships?
How do you know and feel when you can trust others?

Explain to students the policy and public responses that affect refugees and people seeking asylum can impact different communities in different ways. Explain that the connected issues are complex. They include different perspectives and mean different things to individual people, but it is important to approach all discussion with dignity, respect and understanding. It might be useful to consider the reality of the school's and local community's context and discuss with students, in a safe and supportive manner, their experiences with diversity in their community. The SBS interactive tool: How diverse is my suburb? could be a useful tool to stimulate discussion.

Step 2.

Explain to students that they have the opportunity to contribute to their community by taking action to advocate for understanding and empathy in their school and/or community about the issues affecting people seeking asylum as well as share what they have learnt about the various ‘stories’ that seeking asylum can reflect. The first step in this process is to think about the challenges that exist.

Distribute or display this Stories of Chasing Asylum - List of Challenges to the class. Read through the list together, highlighting the challenges raised, identifying what piques the interest of students and what would be beneficial to your school and community if it were addressed.

Step 3.

Once complete, invite students to nominate which challenge they would like to focus on addressing. If possible, assign students into groups of three based on the challenge they choose to focus on. Alternatively, organise the class into groups of three or four students and invite groups to nominate a challenge or assign challenges to groups. See if you can give students the opportunity to work with others who might have a different level of ability or who are of a different cultural background or gender.

Step 4.

Once groups have been established, encourage students to take on a specific role. Each member should take on a specific role (such as Manager, Scribe, Speaker, Director) however, it's worth highlighting that all members will share leadership responsibilities, as each member will need to ensure the project stays on track. Each member should also try to be aware of how the other members of their group are performing and offer support where required.

Part B: Ideation - 50 Ideas in 5 Minutes

Step 1.

Now that students have identified a challenge, they need to start thinking about how they could address it. This activity will guide them in brainstorming ideas by completing the '50 ideas in 5 minutes' challenge.

Students will work in their groups to come up with as many different and varied ideas as possible in 5 minutes. The ideas can be as abstract and off-the-wall as students like (to encourage creativity), but they should also include some practical and realistic ideas too. The aim is to have as many ideas as possible, with a view to being able to choose one that can be developed, refined and put into action.

The group brainstorm could be run like this:

Give each group a piece of butcher’s paper and each person a texta.
Before starting the countdown, ask students to write their action on the top of their piece of paper.
Students should stand around the tables rather than sit in their chairs as this encourages more creative thinking.
They should:
- Write everything down as fast as possible on the butcher's paper.
- Work fast: they only have 5 minutes and they need 50 ideas.
- Do not discuss the ideas at this stage ... just get them recorded.
Give time markers as they progress - "Three minutes left! Two minutes! One minute left!" You could project a countdown of 5 minutes using this online stopwatch.
Share a rough figure of how many ideas have been generated across the whole class - remind students how productive they can be in 5 minutes.
You could offer a prize for the group that creates the most ideas within the 5 minutes.

Step 2.

Once groups have completed the '50 ideas in 5 minutes' challenge, ask each group to spend the rest of the brainstorming time viewing and discussing their list of ideas.

Invite each student to nominate their favourite ideas by:

Drawing a star next to the idea they think is the most creative
Drawing a smiley face next to the idea that they like best

Step 3.

Explain to students that each group needs to select one idea to bring to life. It is important that each group selects an idea that is feasible and realistic to complete within the time frame. Ask each group to use the S.M.A.R.T. project criteria to select one idea that they will complete. Explain to students that S.M.A.R.T. project criteria can help them focus on what they what to achieve, how they will achieve it, how long it will take and how they will measure their group's success.

Part C: Project Planning

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

Step 1.

Write the above quote on the board and explain to students that now they have developed an idea for action, it’s time to start planning a project around this action.

Step 2.

Using the idea developed and refined in Part B, groups should complete the Project Planning Tool on the Student Worksheet. Groups should fill in one per group.

Some tips for supporting groups through the project planning phase:

ensure groups are allocating roles and dividing up the workload fairly
encourage all group members to contribute so that all students have ownership of projects
remind students to be realistic and make the project achievable
advise students to consider possible challenges and obstacles - being prepared is a great way of ensuring the plan will be a success
encourage groups to keep communication lines open at all stages of project planning and actioning.

Part D: Execute the Project

After students have completed the planning process, allow time for students to action their projects. This could be done in one day or over a number of weeks to complete the project. The Project Checklist can be used to help groups complete their project.

Consider the following tips when supporting students through the execution phase of their projects:

be clear about time allocation - remind student how much time they have to complete the project and encourage students to be realistic about the tasks they have to complete in that time
keep communication high, making sure everyone has everything they need to complete the work they have been allocated, and that everyone knows what they should be doing
talk to your principal, parents and staff about what the students are doing and how/why the are completing and actioning their projects
remind students to prepare for setbacks and remind them that making change can be hard. Encourage them, top continue even in the face of obstacles or challenges.

Part E: Public Display of Learning

A whole-school approach to understanding and taking action with respect to people seeking asylum and offshore detention isn't just about what happens in the classroom or school, but, importantly, also involves the community. Furthermore, an important part of real-world learning is the opportunity for students to present their learning in a public arena. This could mean creating a newsletter featuring students' projects and distributing it to parents and community members. Another option could be producing and screening a two-minute film that documents students' projects and their reflections of learning.

Another great way to present students learning in a public arena is hosting a student-led community screening of Chasing Asylum in conjunction with an exhibition where the process and final products of students' projects are displayed. Students can use their project planning skills to organise the screening logistics, the invitations to parents/community members and a Q&A session after the screening. Students can use the following resources to help engage the audience in the film:

A community screening can be organised through Demand.Film.

Remind students that the long-play version of Chasing Asylum is rated MA 15+ and requires parental permission before showing it to audiences 15 years and under.

Reflection

Invite students to complete the project reflection and personal refection (available on the Student Worksheet). Each student should complete both sets of reflection questions independently.

Project reflection

What was the challenge our group chose to focus on?
How does our project help to address the challenge we chose?
What impact did our project have?
Was our project a success? Why or why not?
What parts of the project were the most successful and why?
What parts of the project were the least successful and why? How would we improve these parts?
How would we improve the project overall?
What challenges did we face and how did we overcome them?
How could we extend our project?
Does our project have a legacy?

Self reflection

What did I learn about addressing a specific challenge?
How did I work in the group?
What would I do differently next time?
What was the best part of working on this project and why?
What was the worst part and why?
What impact did I have?
What am I most proud of?

Finally, congratulate your students on their efforts and remind them to be proud of what they achieved, even if they didn't achieve all they hoped to. Making change is hard and efforts to make change should be acknowledged and celebrated.

Stories of Chasing Asylum - Social Action

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