Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What would our school look like if we didn’t care about waste?

15 minutes

Find Out: The problem with litter

30 minutes

Take Action: Litter stories

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions & success criteria

Students will:

use visualisation strategies to understand the implications of improper waste disposal.

Students can:

practice and apply visualisation strategies to real-world concepts
sort a collection of solid waste items.

Tune In: What would our school look like if we didn’t care about waste?

Step 1

Explain to students that the teacher will be reading out a scenario. Students can use their five senses to create a mental image of what is being read. Students can keep their eyes closed or open for this task.

Scenario:

Imagine you're walking into your schoolyard on a sunny morning. The grass is green, and the trees sway gently in the breeze. But something is wrong. As you look around, you see pieces of litter everywhere.
There are crumpled lolly wrappers on the ground, some plastic bottles lying near the play equipment, and an old, torn lunch bag stuck in the branches of a tree. By the basketball court, you notice a juice box that has spilled, making a sticky puddle. Near the sandbox, you see a bunch of papers fluttering in the wind.
Even the picnic tables are covered in trash. Sandwich crusts, apple cores, and empty chip bags are scattered everywhere. It seems like no one bothered to throw their rubbish in the bins.

Step 2

Now read out the scenario again, and this time, invite students to start recording their impressions of this scenario using the following prompts to identify what they are visualising:

I see…
I hear…
I smell…
I taste…
I touch…

Step 3

Invite students to do a quick sketch of what they visualised in this scenario. Reiterate that it doesn't have to be a highly detailed drawing; they may have the chance to create a more detailed one later in this lesson.

Visualising is a key literacy comprehension strategy where students create mental images to better understand a topic. By imagining scenes or concepts, they enhance comprehension, engagement, and recall, making the content more vivid and memorable.

Find Out: The problem with litter

Step 1

Distribute the All About Litter Factsheet to pairs of students and invite them to read it together. In the space provided on the fact sheet, students can make notes about things they find interesting or important.

Step 2

Once complete, pose the following questions:

Why should litter go in the bin?
Could litter be bad for our environment or is it just ugly?

Optional: You could also share this video with students. This is a fairly simplified video about waste in our environment; many more videos are available online that show more details about the impacts of waste in our environment. However, they also often contain upsetting imagery, so please use with caution.

Take Action: Litter stories

Step 1

Students will use their sketch from the first part of the lesson and the information from the fact sheet to write a short story about the problem with litter.

As part of the planning phase, students could work in pairs to brainstorm ideas about what could happen in their stories. They should also think about what will happen at the start, middle, and end of their stories and who the main characters will be (they can be human or animal). The setting should remain the schoolyard, and they can use their sketches as inspiration.

You could consider suggesting some story stems, such as:

I don’t speak frog, but I could tell something was wrong…
As I scampered towards the table, I encountered an obstacle…
I quite liked my new home until…
A plastic bag! I’d heard about these from…
Thinking I’d spotted a black-shouldered kite I crept forward. But it was only…

Step 2

Recommend that each student prepare a rough draft of their stories before creating a final version.

If time permits, students could create one or more illustrations for their stories. You could also provide some time for students to share and compare their stories.

Reflection

Invite students to reflect on what they learned about litter and our environment using the following:

I used to think…
But now I think…

What If We Didn’t Care About Our Waste?

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Summary

Lesson guides and printables

In this lesson