Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes	Part B: Which Waste Issue Do You Care About Most?
30 minutes	Part C: Developing Solutions To Community Waste Issues
60 minutes	Part D: Project Planning
30 minutes	Reflection

Lesson preparation:

You could invite students to watch the following clips prior to beginning this activity. Students could record anything they find important or interesting about these clips and bring their notes to class. View on iTunes or Enhance TV (Episode 1, Episode 3):

Episode 1, Australia - 21:45 to 30:20

Episode 3, Australia - 12:51 to 14:30

Episode 3, Australia - 50:14 to 53:25

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Step 1.

Begin by reviewing student knowledge of waste. Depending on students' prior knowledge you could do this by choosing one or more of the following activities:

Divide the class into groups and assign each group with a topic addressed in the War On Waste - Years 7-10 unit, such as consumption, food waste, fast fashion or plastics (Note: If you have covered multiple topics you could assign different groups to different topics, or you could choose a topic that is relevant to other issues relating to waste in students lives or at school). Each group can create a mind-map to record everything they know about their assigned topic. Groups can then share their ideas with the class.
Review the results of your litter and/or waste audit and describe the big waste issues that you identified in your school. Students could create a table on the board to record important information.
Review the results of your plastic waste breakdown experiment and draw conclusions about which types of waste cause the most problems for our environment. Students could create a table on the board to record important information.
Where students haven’t completed any of the other lessons in this unit, invite them to read one or all of the following factsheets and share what information they found interesting or important:
- Plastic Pollution Facts
- Fast Fashion Facts
- Coffee Cup Images
- Food Waste Facts

Step 2.

Differentiation:

If students have already watched the following three War On Waste clips: Invite students to share their answers on what they noticed in these clips, and in particular what they found interesting or important.

If students haven't watched the following three War On Waste clips: Play the following clips for students, explaining that they come from War On Waste. As they watch, ask students to record anything important or interesting that they notice. View on iTunes or Enhance TV (Episode 1, Episode 3):

Episode 1, Australia - 21:45 to 30:20

Episode 3, Australia - 12:51 to 14:30

Episode 3, Australia - 50:14 to 53:25

Once complete, allow students some time to reflect on these clips and to share what they found important or interesting. In addition, did they notice any waste issues not raised earlier in the class (Step 1)? Make a record of these issues.

Through your discussion explain to students that these clips show that:

Ordinary people in Australia do care about waste and our environment
People are willing to take action to reduce the environmental impacts of the things they consume
All of us can do something to help reduce the impact of waste on our environment.

Explain to students that in the rest of this lesson they will be choosing a waste problem that they think is important and working collaboratively to develop an action to address this problem.

Part B: Which Waste Issue Do You Care About Most?

Step 1.

Now ask students to think about the waste issues they looked at earlier in this lesson. If you haven’t already, make a list of these items on the board. If relevant, work as a class to group these issues into themes.

If you would like students to work in groups to complete their social action: Invite students to look at the themes/issues you have identified and select the one that they are most interested in. Students can then move into groups based on these themes.
If you would like students to work as a class to complete their social action: Invite students to look at these issues and select three that are most interesting or important to them. They should then come up to the board and add three tally marks next to the topic that is most important to them, two next to the one that is their second most important, and one tally mark next to their third most important topic. Once complete, count and record the tally marks next to each topic. The one with the most tally marks can be the one you choose to focus on.

Step 2.

Either working as a class or in groups spend a few minutes with students reviewing their understanding of the issue they have selected. If you have completed previous lessons on this topic you could review your learning on the topic; if you haven’t completed lessons on this topic students could spend some time conducting research online or in the library to ensure they have a good understanding of this topic and any problems associated with it - students should aim to find the main cause and effect relating to this issue and any particular implications/associations with Australia.

Step 3.

Once students have a good understanding of their issue, explain to students that they now need to frame their topic as a ‘design challenge question’. A design challenge question helps us to think, explore and create many different solutions to one problem. For this lesson, the design challenge question will be framed as a ‘How might we…?’ question.

Explain to students that some waste problems can seem enormous and so we can be led into thinking that we need to make big changes. However, most successful projects are tested in a smaller setting as this allows for challenges to be more easily addressed. For this reason, it is recommended that you focus your social action on your local community. If your idea is successful in this setting then you could always take it beyond your community!

There are two options for developing the ‘How might we…?’ question:

Option 1. Consider how you can reframe your problem as a question. For example, consider the following problem:
- There are a lot of people walking around with disposable coffee cups in our community.
- To frame this problem as a ‘How might we…?’ question, we could ask ‘How might we help our community move away from using disposable coffee cups?’
Option 2. Alternatively, you could create a question based on the following:
- How might we get our community more involved in addressing/taking action for (insert your topic here)?

Part C: Developing Solutions To Community Waste Issues

Step 1.

Students will now start developing solutions to their ‘How might we…?’ question by thinking about what actions they can take to address their question. Invite students to arrange the classroom furniture so that they are comfortable enough to think expansively and creatively. Groups may like to work on the floor, around butcher's paper attached to the wall or on a whiteboard. Provide each group with three sheets of butcher's paper, markers and sticky notes.

Sticky-notes allow students to physically move two or more ideas around, mixing and matching to shape something special.

Facilitate groups to complete a three-phase brainstorming activity:

Phase 1: Discovering actions we can take

Invite students to create a list of actions (verbs, or 'doing' words) that could be taken to address their design challenge question: How might we...?

Inform groups that they should aim to come up with as many different actions as they can. There will be time to consider the best ideas after the brainstorm. Remind students that the 'best' may depend on who their target audience is and the context in which the actions are taking place.

Ask students to write the heading 'Actions' on the first piece of paper. If necessary, share a few examples of actions before students begin the first phase of the brainstorm.

Actions:
Build Start Bake Sing Run Change Donate to Promote Fundraise Campaign Make Film

Direct students to put only one action on each sticky note and to use only one colour sticky note for this phase. (This is important for the third phase, which requires the notes to be moved around.)

Then, get students started on three minutes of fast thinking (you could use this online stopwatch to track time). Let students know when three minutes is up, then congratulate them on their quick thinking. Ask them to put that sheet of paper to one side for now.

Phase 2: What are our skills and interests?

Ask groups to select a different colour sticky note and a new sheet of paper. Invite groups to write the heading: 'Skills and interests'. Explain that the next five minutes will be used to list the skills and interests of people within the group. Help students get started by providing examples, then let them know they have another five minutes. Ensure that students write one skill or interest per sticky note.

Encourage hidden or quirky skills like 'magic tricks' or 'costume design'.

Actions:	Skills and interests:
Build Start Bake Sing Run Change Donate to Promote Fundraise Campaign Make Film	Skateboarding Making clothes Calligraphy High jump Coding Photography Poetry writing

Phase 3: Mix and match to create our idea

Ask groups to take the last sheet of paper and write their design challenge question at the top of the page. Challenge groups to come up with five or more ideas to address the design challenge question by matching sticky notes from each column. Encourage students to come up with all the ideas they can – let groups know that they don’t yet need to think about how feasible the ideas are. For this phase, students should just aim to have fun playing around with possibilities. If necessary, scaffold this phase by providing some examples.

Actions:	Skills and interests:	Creative idea:
Build Start Bake Sing Run Change Donate to Promote Fundraise Campaign Make Film	Skateboarding Making clothes Calligraphy High jump Coding Photography Poetry writing	* Make skateboards out of waste materials and run a skateboarding display to raise awareness about waste and resource use. - Create high-jump signs of the amounts of different waste created by the school in a day/week/month and hold a competition where students have to jump over the different heights of waste. - Use student photographs of waste to raise awareness of waste issues in your community.

Some other ideas for action include:

War On Waste screenings to highlight the need for waste awareness.
Create an information booklet with drawings and cartoons created by students to share the messages raised in War On Waste.
Hold a waste information session with students and staff.

Allow at least ten minutes for this phase of the brainstorm, encouraging students to think expansively and creatively and to talk through their ideas with each other. While students are working, watch for indications of a slowing down of ideas.

Step 2.

Once groups have completed the brainstorm challenge, ask each group to spend some 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 will be selecting one idea to bring to life. It is important that they select an idea that is feasible and realistic to complete within the time frame. One way to do this is using the S.M.A.R.T. goals. Share the following clip with students:

How to Set SMART Goals (https://youtu.be/wGbmAH4mBPA)

For a downloadable version of the S.M.A.R.T. goals, view the S.M.A.R.T. Goals Criteria.

Ask each group to use the S.M.A.R.T. goals to select one idea that they will complete. Explain to students that S.M.A.R.T. goals can help you to focus on what you want to achieve, how you will achieve it, how long it will take and how you will measure your group’s success.

Step 4.

Ask students to decide on their idea. If required, they could cast a vote. Once a decision has been made, invite students to use their workbooks to explain how their idea addresses the ‘How might we…?’ question. In addition, explain to students that if any of the ideas don’t stand up to the S.M.A.R.T. goals, they should be critically evaluated and perhaps revised or discarded. If they have more than one idea that stands up to the S.M.A.R.T. goals then the group should decide fairly on which one to choose. If none of the ideas stand up to the S.M.A.R.T. goals, then groups will need to adjust or adapt existing ideas to meet the goals.

Part D: Project Planning

Step 1.

Now that students have developed an idea for action, it’s time to start planning a project around this action.

Using the idea developed and refined in Part C, the class/groups should complete the Project Planning Tool. If working in groups, each group should fill in one per group.

Step 2.

Hold a ten-minute conference with the class/each group to discuss their plan. Use these questions to guide the conference:

What are you planning to do?
How does your action help address your 'How might we…?' question?
What help or resources do you need to get it done? How might we get these?
What is the time frame for your project? When do you plan to have completed your project by?
What step-by-step processes are necessary to see your project completed?
Have you identified any challenges or risks associated with the project, and how might you address these?

Refer to the Reflection part of this lesson and ensure students have a clear understanding of the assessment criteria. It useful, direct students to self-reflection and project reflection assessement activities.

Part E: Project Delivery

Step 1.

After students have completed the planning process, allow them time to action their projects. Distribute a Project Checklist to groups so that they can keep track of what they need to do to deliver their project. Provide students with information about the deadline for delivery of their project and any relevant logistics relating to your school, such as other staff who could support them, how to book resources such as cameras and rooms, or who to speak to for permission for their intended action.

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

Step 2.

At appropriate intervals, conference with students to discuss their progress. Use these questions to guide the conference:

What have you done so far, and how/why?
What needs to be done next, and how/why?
When will it be finished, and how?
What help or resources do you still need to get it done, and how might we get these?

Reflection

Step 1.

An important part of real-world learning, such as in this project, is the opportunity for students to present their learning in a public arena. This could mean:

Hosting an exhibition where the process and final products of students’ projects are displayed; or
Preparing an article for the newsletter about students’ projects; or
Producing and screening a two-minute film that documents students’ projects.

In this presentation ensure that students communicate:

Why they chose this project (e.g. what problem were they hoping to address and why)
What was involved in completing this project (e.g. what actions did they take?)
What the impact of their project was
How they might like to extend or continue this project.

Through this process ensure that you share the skills, attitudes and capabilities you observed in your students, and explain the importance and transferability of these qualities with the ability to succeed in life.

Step 2.

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

Project reflection

Give a short overview of the action your group took.
Was our project a success? Why or why not?
What parts were the most successful and why?
What were the least successful and why? What could we do to improve these parts?
What challenges did we face and how did we overcome them?
Overall, how could we extend or continue our action?

Self-reflection

Which of your skills and interests were involved in delivering your project?
How did you contribute to your group's success?
What would you do differently next time?
What was the best part of working on this project and why?
What was the most challenging part and why?
What are you 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 in the ways they may have initially intended. Making change is hard. Efforts towards creating change, and learnings gained along the way, should be acknowledged and celebrated.

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?

War On Waste - Taking Action For Waste

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