The OASIS - Social Issues and Homelessness Awareness

The Unit is based on THE OASIS documentary, which raises awareness of youth homelessness and celebrates the resilience of young people who are experiencing homelessness in Australia. It is designed to empower the next generation of young people to take action to prevent youth homelessness in the future.

The resource is organised into an inquiry unit containing individual lessons. Each lesson incorporates clips from the film as well as a number of other real-world videos, articles, pictures and infographics as learning stimuli. The unit has adopted an action-based, experiential learning approach, and activities encourage student participation through movement, group work, ICT and visible thinking routines. Students are required to engage in meaningful reflection at the conclusion of each lesson, and are encouraged to continue their thinking and scrutiny around the topics addressed throughout the lessons - both as summative and formative assessment. Each lesson features extension ideas and the provision of learning support.

The investigation and learning completed throughout the unit are then applied to students’ local context through a teacher-scaffolded student-led social action project. Students choose an issue to address and present their project for exhibition to a real audience.