Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

	Part A: Exploring Places
40 minutes	Part B: Looking After Special Places
50 minutes	Part C: Creating a Dream Car and Entering the Contest
10 minutes	Reflection

Preparation:

Collect a range of photos from places that students are familiar with or that they know and enjoy. These places could include but are not limited to:

Home
School
Park
Beach
City
Country
Sports centre/swimming pool/oval
Religious or cultural meeting place (e.g. mosque, church, hall)

You could also invite students to bring in a photo or create a drawing of a place that is important to them.

You can also print the Place Flashcards and use to complement your own collection of pictures.

Part A: Exploring Places

Step 1.

Begin this lesson by inviting students to share some of the places they visit regularly. Prompt student ideas by posing the following questions:

Where do you usually go during the day?
Where do you usually go at night?
Where do you often go on the weekend?

Record student responses on the board.

Step 2.

Now, display the place pictures you collected earlier (or the Place Flashcards), on a table or the floor and invite students to form a circle around the pictures. Spend a few minutes with children discussing the following:

What are these places?
Have you ever been to any of these places (or places like these)?
Why would you visit these places? (E.g. you might visit the park to have a play, you might go to the shops to buy food, or you might go to the pool for swimming lessons.)
Who might you normally go to these places with?

Where students have brought in their own pictures of places, invite them to briefly share what they love about this place. Depending on the number of students you have, this could be done as a class or in pairs.

Step 3.

Now, spend some time working with students to think about how these places could be sorted into themes. For example:

Having many or few buildings or built features – consider the following discussion points:
- What is a building? A building could be a house, shed, shop, school, skyscraper, etc.
- What other things can you build? Think about paths, playgrounds, walls, fences, etc.
- Differentiation for Years 1 & 2 - What are managed, or constructed, features? How do these compare to natural features?
Having lots of nature – consider the following discussion points:
- What might you find in nature? Think about plants and animals, creeks or rivers, the beach, mountains, and hills, etc.
Being quiet or noisy places – consider the following discussion points:
- What might you hear in a noisy place?
- Is a city noisy? What can you hear in a city?
- Is nature noisy? What can you hear in nature? Is wind noisy? Are waves noisy? Are birds noisy?
How these places make us feel (e.g. calm, anxious, excited, bored, etc.) – consider the following discussion points:
- Are there places that always make you feel calm or happy?
- Are there places that always make you feel excited or bored?
- Are there places that always make you feel anxious?
Having many or few people – consider the following discussion points:
- Which sorts of places might be crowded?
- Which sorts of places might you find very few people?

Step 4.

You can now invite students to think about which place is most important or special to them and why. Invite each student to briefly share their thoughts and record these on the board. As you go, highlight to students that there are many different views on these issues and emphasise that different views are interesting. Encourage all students to listen to the views of others respectfully and provide support for different points of view.

Part B: Looking After Special Places

Step 1.

Explain to students that now that they have identified a place that is special to them and described why it is special to them, they can think about the ways this place could be cared for so that people can continue visiting and enjoying this place in the way that the students do into the future.

Explain that students are going to do this by imagining a car that could visit this place and would have everything required to look after this place. The car they are going to create will be a dream car. Students will then be creating a drawing or painting of this car and submitting this artwork to the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest.

Spend a few moments discussing the process of submitting students' artworks and the prizes that might be won.

You could also work with students to view some of the previous year’s finalists of the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest. As you view these artworks, invite students to consider:

What do you notice about this artwork?
What are the best things about this artwork?
What features of the cars in these artworks do you like the best and why?

Step 2.

You could now work with the class to dream up some ideas for your students’ own cars. Pose the following question to students and record ideas on the board:

How can my dream car look after my special place?

If students are struggling to think of ideas, you could encourage them to think back to how they sorted the places into themes, and consider some or all of these themes in the context of their dream car; for example:

How might this car look after buildings and built features?
How might this car look after nature?
How might this car keep this place quiet or noisy?
How might this car make this place a happy or calm place?

Some tips for thinking about your dream car:

Part C: Creating a Dream Car and Entering the Contest

Step 1.

Working independently, invite students to take a moment to look at the features of the dream cars you have added to the board. Invite students to think about which ideas they find most appealing.

Step 2.

Explain to students that they are now going to create an artwork that describes their very own dream car. Once complete, this artwork will be submitted to the Toyota Dream Car Art Contest.

Explain the following contest rules for creating your dream car:

You must create your dream car artwork by yourself (no working with a friend or in a group).
Your dream car must be hand-created using things like pencils, pens/markers, crayons, paints, etc. It can’t be made using collage or a computer/digital device.
It must be drawn on an A3 piece of paper (or smaller). You might like to use this Toyota Dream Car Drawing Template.
Find the contest entry information here (including dates, prizes and full terms and conditions).

Step 3.

Invite each student to create a draft version of their dream car. Give students a set amount of time to create their draft, and emphasise that perfection is not important at this stage: instead, it is more important to have fun and to create the car of your dreams!

This dream car can include some of the features written on the board from the class brainstorm, or students can think up features that are entirely new!

Depending on time, you could also encourage students to experiment with different colouring or painting techniques and mediums, such as:

Techniques - pointillism, hatching or shading.
Mediums - pencils, marker pens, acrylic paints, watercolour paints or pencils, crayons, pastels, etc.

Step 4.

Once students have created their drafts, invite them to share their artworks with a classmate and to offer feedback. Use the following tips during the feedback process:

Step 5.

Once feedback has been provided, invite students to create the final draft of their dream car on A3 paper, incorporating feedback where necessary.

Step 6.

As part of their entry, students are required to write a statement in response to the following: “Please explain the idea behind ‘Your Dream Car’ artwork”.

Ask students to create a draft version of their response, ensuring that they focus on being clear and brief and that they have explained what their car will do and how it will do it.

Again, invite students to share their statements with another student to seek feedback, and to check spelling and grammar.

Finally, scan or take a clear photograph of each entry and submit all entries using the online entry form.

Important! Students (or yourself) will need to hang onto their artworks after entering in order to be eligible to win prizes and have their artwork showcased.

Reflection

Engage students in a class discussion about their artworks by inviting them to respond to the following questions:

What part of my dream car do I like the most and why? What are its best features?
What part of my artwork am I most proud of? (Think of technique, choice of medium, colours, etc.)
Why should we look after the places that are special to us?
What are some reasons people are connected to special places? How do different people think about special places in different ways? (E.g. how they make us feel, the people we visit those places with, the food we eat there, the things we do in those places, etc.)
What are some other ways we could look after the places that are special to us? (E.g. looking after the plants and animals that live there, picking up litter, treating things gently and carefully, etc.)

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?

Toyota Dream Car Art Contest - Caring for Our Favourite Places

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