Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What is an audit?

20 minutes

Find Out: Auditing our light

25 minutes

Take Action: Reducing light

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

identify the mechanisms for managing light in their community
develop a plan to modify/manage the lighting in their community.

Success criteria

Students can:

discuss light as a feature of our environments to be managed.

Tune In: What is an audit?

Step 1

Introduce the concept of an audit: a check of how much of something you have, compared to how much you should have.

Demonstrate this process by auditing a classroom resource, such as the number of pencils in your resource area or pencil cases. Model recording this on the whiteboard.

For example:

Number of boxes	Number of pencils per box	How many pencils we should have	How many pencils we do have

Step 2

Initiate a class discussion by asking students what we can do with this information. For example, if we had too many pencils, perhaps we could put some away until others run out, or see if another class is short and give them our extras.

Open the discussion of auditing the amount of light that we can find in the school. Review the problems caused for wildlife by too much light, which you completed in Lesson 2.

Find Out: Auditing our light

Step 1

Break students into ‘research teams’ of 3. Distribute a copy of the Student Worksheet to each team. Each team will also require a clipboard and a pencil.

Outline to students the process of the audit. The class is going to choose some places around the school and audit the sources of artificial light in those spaces. In their teams, 1 student will be responsible for counting the sources of light, another for recording their observations, and the third will ensure that their team stays focused, respectful, and listens to the instructions to stop and return to class.

During this audit, students will need to search the space very carefully to find the different sources of artificial light, and then check them off on their worksheet. You will also count the number of these sources in the space. There are some blank squares to fill out any other types of light you find, but you might not need these spaces.

The second section of the Student Worksheet will be used when they return to class, so they do not need to write anything in it yet. As groups move around the school, they must respect anyone else using and working in the space. Remember, each research team has a member who will be in charge of reminding each team to do this.

If your students enjoyed this activity, check out The B&B BioBlitz by Planting Seeds. They are calling on schools' citizen scientists to help gather information about Australia’s biodiversity.

Step 2

If you can arrange to have adequate adult supervision, allocate a few research teams to a different adult and move to different pre-selected spaces around your school, so that groups can complete an audit of different spaces. Good ideas could be:

your classroom
the school reception and entranceway
the library.

If you will be completing the audit as a whole class, provide each research team with a Student Worksheet for each space you will be auditing. They can then choose their favourite space for the Take Action section of this lesson. It is also fine to just choose your classroom if moving around the school will be too complex!

Step 3

Move to the selected spaces and support students as required to complete their Student Worksheets, before returning to class.

Take Action: Reducing light

Step 1

Share the audit results. Highlight 2-3 of the most frequently occurring sources of light within your school. Invite students to consider what good things might happen if the light in these areas were reduced, used differently or removed.

Also, discuss if there are things that reduce the impact of the lights, like curtains to stop indoor light from shining outside, motion sensors so they only come on when needed, or shields so light only shines in 1 direction where needed. Please note that the colour also matters. Low-intensity red lights have the least impact on most animals, and high-intensity white LED lights have the worst impact.

Encourage students to think about their knowledge of light pollution, gained in previous lessons of the Lights Out for Nature unit. They might also draw on knowledge about energy consumption and resource use.

Step 2

Ask students to vote on which of the sources of light they think would be the most beneficial if it were reduced within their school.

Using their responses, direct students to return to their worksheets and talk them through the section titled ‘My Light Reduction Plan’. Support students in designing a plan that they can achieve. This could be done individually, in small groups, or as a whole class, depending on the independence of your students.

Step 3

Allow your students to implement their plan!

Reflection

Step 1

Initiate a Think, Pair and Share with your students on the following questions:

What is your next step to help reduce light pollution?
How can we share our knowledge and inspire other people to choose change?

Finding the Light

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Summary

Lesson guides and printables

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