What Is Poverty?

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

• critical thinking
• digital literacy
• empathy
• enterprise
• ethical understanding
• reflection

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description: Year 7 & 8 Business and Economics

• Develop questions to investigate a contemporary economic and business issue AC9HE7S01
• Locate, select and organise information and data from a range of sources AC9HE7S02
• Develop a response to an economic and business issue, identifying potential costs and benefits AC9HE7S04

General capabilities:  Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical Understanding, Personal and Social Capability 

NSW Syllabus outcomes: COM4

Cross-curriculum priority: Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia, Sustainability

Relevant parts of Year 7 & 8 achievement standards: Students can develop questions to investigate an economic and business issue. They locate, select and organise data and information from sources. They interpret information and data to identify economic and business issues, trends or effects.

UN SDG 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

• Target 1.1: By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.

• Device capable of accessing the internet (1 per student)

This lesson has been developed with the support of The Life You Can Save.

The Life You Can Save conducts research to identify non-profits running highly impactful programs that address the multiple dimensions of poverty. They also help connect people who want to donate money and resources with these non-profits to maximise the impact of their gifts. They aim to create a world where everyone has an opportunity to build a better life and where there’s no suffering or death due to extreme poverty. The Life You Can Save was founded by Melbourne-born Peter Singer, widely recognised as one of the world’s most influential contemporary philosophers, to advance the ideas in his 2009 book The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (republished 2019). Since then, they’ve worked to introduce the ideas from Professor Singer’s book to new audiences, inspiring people to help others experiencing poverty around the world and empowering them to make the greatest impact possible.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Low – facilitate discussion and student research.

Ethical Understanding in the Australian Curriculum v9

Explore how to teach the General Capability of Ethical Understanding as of version 9 of the Australian Curriculum. Learn what Ethical Understanding involves and how to incorporate ethics into your regular teaching.