Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes	Part B: Identifying The Issue
30 minutes	Part C: Developing Solutions
60 minutes	Part D: Project Planning
30 minutes	Reflection

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Step 1.

Begin this lesson by reviewing your students' knowledge of waste. You could do this by choosing one or more of the following activities:

Divide the class into groups and assign each group with a waste topic addressed in this War On Waste - Years 4-6 unit, such as food waste, fast fashion or plastics. Each group can conduct a brainstorm or 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 audit/s (Waste Audit and/or Litter Audit) and describe the big waste issues that you identified in your school.
Review the results of your waste breakdown experiment and draw conclusions about which types of waste cause the most problems for our environment.
Where students haven’t completed any of the other lessons in this War On Waste - Years 4-6 unit, invite them to read this Plastic Factsheet and share what information they found interesting or important.

Step 2.

Show the class the following clip (iTunes, Clickview), explaining that it comes from War On Waste that shows how a school is fighting the war on waste:

Episode 4, Australia - 51:57 to 58:12

Once complete, allow students some time to reflect on the clip and explain that the clip describes how one school in South Australia tackled a waste issue that was important to them.

Extend: The following clip provides another example of a school taking action for a waste issue they identified as being important to them. Consider sharing this clip with students and engaging them in a discussion around what they saw in this clip:

Lane Cove Public School join the War On Waste (https://youtu.be/kMzCzpU_MXE)

Step 3.

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: Identifying The Issue

Step 1.

Ask students to think about the waste issues they either know or looked at in an earlier lesson. Make a list of these issues on the board.

Invite students to look at these issues and select three that are most interesting or important to them. Students 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.

Spend a few minutes with students reviewing their understanding of this issue. 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 the class has a good understanding of this topic and any problems associated with it.

The Cool Australia digital library is a great place for students to independently explore the issue of waste: Digital Library.

Step 3.

Explain to students that they 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.

‘How might we...?’ questions are problems that have been rephrased as challenges or tackle-able questions. The ‘How might we...?’ phrasing is used because it suggests that a solution is possible and that the challenge can be addressed in a number of ways. ‘How might we...?’ questions, when properly phrased, don't suggest one solution - rather, they provide a great frame for innovative, out-of-the-box thinking.

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

Option 1. Consider how you can reframe your problem as a question. For example, consider the following problem:
- There’s a lot of litter near the oval at our school.
- To frame this problem as a ‘How might we…?’ question, we could ask ‘How might we stop litter being dropped around the oval at our school?’.
Option 2. Alternatively, you could create a question based on the following:
- How might we get our school more involved in addressing/taking action for (insert your topic here)?

Part C: Developing Solutions

Step 1.

Students will now start developing solutions to their ‘How might we…?’ question.

Invite students to arrange the classroom furniture so that they are comfortable enough to think expansively and creatively. Break the class into groups of five or six students of mixed age and ability. 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.

Facilitate groups to complete the following three-phase brainstorming activity:

Phase 1: Discovering actions we can take

In the first stage, students will be creating a list of actions (verbs, or 'doing' words) that could be taken to address their 'How might we...?' question. Groups 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.

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
Refuse Reduce Reuse Recycle Start Sing Swim 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 are 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.

Actions	Skills and interests
Refuse Reduce Reuse Recycle Start Sing Swim Change Donate to Promote Collect Campaign Make Film	Skating Drama Painting Coding Photography Writing music Football

Phase 3: Mix and match to create our idea

Ask groups to take the last sheet of paper and write their 'How might we...?' question at the top of the page. Challenge groups to come up with five or more ideas to address the 'How might we...?' 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
Refuse Reduce Reuse Recycle Start Sing Swim Change Donate to Promote Fundraise Campaign Make Film	Skating Drama Painting Coding Photography Writing music Football	* Create a photographic exhibition of the things you could refuse, reduce, reuse or recycle to share with the school community. - Hold a football fun day to raise awareness about waste issues at your school. - Collect waste materials to use as musical instruments for a piece of music written by students.

Step 2.

Students should now spend some time in their groups discussing the ideas that came up and thinking about which are their favourites.

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.

It is important that they select an idea that is feasible and realistic to complete within the time frame. The following 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. Once groups have selected an idea, ask them to work collaboratively to test your idea using the S.M.A.R.T. goals:

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

For a downloadable version of the S.M.A.R.T. goals, view the Student Worksheet or click here: S.M.A.R.T. Goals Criteria.

Use the S.M.A.R.T. goals to help you improve your idea and to make any necessary adjustments to ensure a greater chance of success.

Step 4.

Each group can then present their idea to the class. If you would like to work as a class to pursue just one idea for action, you could then work together to decide which idea you would like to pursue. Alternatively, students could continue working in groups to complete their action.

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, and why? What is the context for your project?
How is it addressing your 'How might we…?' question?
What help or resources do you need to get it done, and how might we get these?
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?

If working as a class, you might like to assign roles to students to ensure your project runs smoothly. You could use these Group Roles to help you assign roles.

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

Part E: Execute The Project

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 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 the reasons they chose this problem)
The actions taken to complete this project
The impact of their project
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? How could we improve these parts?
Overall, how could we improve, extend or continue the action?
What challenges did we face and how did we overcome them?
How could we extend or continue our project?

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. Creating 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 - Going To War On Waste

Go to

Summary

Lesson guides and printables

In this lesson