Be the change
Learning Sequence 4
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Introduction
This week students start to delve into the understanding of the actions set by the United Nations within each sustainability goal for the world.
This will involve our students reading, comprehending, understanding, and discussing the various actions and then deciding upon two actions which meet their community’s needs and including them.
. Although we have already provided guidance, this gives students agents independence sun helps to build their confidence in the work they’re about to do.
This action task card will be a checklist which each group will need to fulfil over the next seven weeks. Teachers are encouraged to give students flexibility, independence and freedom to make decisions of their own, encouraging experimentation and even failure during this process.
This week we are going to request that you start taking a bit of time to understand the actions set underneath your particular sustainability goal for the world.
Once you and your team had read through them carefully and started to discuss what your actions might look like, it’s time for you to make two actions of your own. This will involve you and your team discussing, compromising, and negotiating what actions you think would be best suited to match the needs of your community and how you are going to achieve them?
Finally, today we will learn how to design and curate our own poster to send home to families with regards to our actions on what we want our families to do.
This is going to be a week of action, a week of creativity and a week where change begins.
Weekly Keywords
Introduce the spelling word list and choose from this list of tasks that can be repeated and expanded upon if necessary.
Copy the words into a spelling list/Vocabulary book for later reference.
Put each of the new words into a sentence and underline the new vocabulary in red pencil
Place the words in alphabetical order in a list.
Use a dictionary to define each of the words and place them into a vocabulary book.
Try to represent each of the words using a picture or a symbol and play the guessing game. (which image is matched to which word)
Write a paragraph containing all of the new vocabulary.
Make a vocabulary wall containing all of the new words.
Use a thesaurus to find synonyms for the words and create a synonym list.
These words will help you during this week’s lesson. You may already know some of these words however practice makes perfect!
First, read the words and then try to define them as simply as possible.
An example has been completed for you. You can write these into your books, and draw a picture to match or simply complete the task card.
Watch and Discuss - ‘Weekly Warm-Up Activity'
Each week we will read the book ‘Be the Change’ together as a class and answer a series of comprehension questions based on the changemaker we have just talked about.
The questions will be in the form of literal, inferential and applied questions with added research questions for children to conduct further research once the lesson is completed.
This will give the children insights into how. Changemakers in history have engaged with the world when attempting to make significant differences in the lives of the people, animals, insects and organisms on this planet to make it a better place.
Please read pages six and seven based on the life of Rosa Parks and answer the following questions.
Question one: Where was Rosa Park born?
Question two: What happened in 1955 on a bus?
Question three: How did Rosa Parks show determination and strength?
Question four: Why were African American people treated differently in 1965?
Question five: What happened when the police arrived on the bus?
Question six: What is the congressional gold medal?
Question seven: What can we learn from Rosa’s story?
Question eight: What would you do if you saw that somebody was being discriminated against?
Question 9: What does the word equality mean?
Question 10: What happened after Rosa was arrested?
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Set Your Team Goals
Once all of the groups have collectively decided on their actions and instil their own actions within the task card, a good idea is to then display these in the classroom for everyone to collectively see.
This is the perfect opportunity to develop a collective responsibility towards achieving these goals and also proudly advertise the fact that the school community is working together to achieve an overall target of ticking all 17 sustainability goals.For the world.
It is also a wonderful opportunity for students to come forward with any issues or problems they might be facing in terms of achieving some of the more difficult tasks on their cards.
Once you have found your task card with a set of 10 goals which your group are going to work towards, it’s now time for you to discuss these goals, understand them, and make sure that you have thought about how you might take action to get your community to follow these guidelines. You are probably feeling very excited about getting started on these tasks.
As you will see there are two blank spaces and this is for you on your group to decide upon two extra actions which you think you would like to achieve in your community. Take some time to discuss, negotiate, compromise, and then decide upon two extra actions which you feel would help your community become a more sustainable one!
Once completed, this task card will be your checklist for the entire term, and your objective is to make sure that all twelve of these actions are carried out by your Community and therefore building change within your community and the world collectively.
You are now a Change Maker.
Stand Up and Speak!
This will give your groups an opportunity to come together collectively and negotiate how they’re going to put the message to the rest of the class about the actions they are about to take.
This exercise will allow children to develop a sense of confidence in what they’re about to do, and also in speaking in front of small groups of children to portray simple messages.
Give the students a small window of time to prepare their speech? This should only take around 60 seconds to deliver including any questions that the students may wish to ask!
The groups may wish to approach the class together, or an individual with more confidence may wish to speak on the group’s behalf. The choice is yours.
As a group, it’s now time for you to stand up in front of the class to inform everybody else about your actions and potentially think about how they might be able to help you.
There may be people in your class who have connections who have fathers, mothers, uncles, aunties, grandmas and grandfathers, who can assist you in getting some of your actions off the ground.
As a group, stand up in front of the class, talk about your SDG, talk about your actions, and then talk about the new actions that you have included that you want to get across the line in the next seven weeks.
Remember when speaking in front of an audience, it’s important to have a clear voice. It’s important to speak slowly, and it’s also very important to know exactly what you’re about to say.
Make your speech short, sharp and positive.
How to Design a Poster in Canva
In a few moments time, we’re going to be asking you to use the canvas system to design your very own poster, to tell the world exactly what you’re going to be doing over the next seven weeks.
Before you start planning your poster, watch this instructional video on how you can create an amazing poster on the Canva platform.
Creating a Poster
This part of the session allows our students to be creative and persuasive at the same time.
During this process, students will be asked to plan and prepare their poster on a piece of paper, drawing a rough outline of what the poster may look like first.
Once they had planned their poster, it is then time to start using Canva to design it professionally. By following the eight points here to assist them with developing a concise and presentable poster, it should have the ability to persuade the community to take action within their households.
These posters can then be displayed in the classroom, in the hallways, around the community, and even taken out into the local community to cause change to occur.
Additional lessons around language and persuasive devices, including emotive language, may be beneficial for children as they decide on their headline and their call to action.
Now it’s time for you to design a poster using Canva that tells the entire community exactly what the next seven weeks are going to look like, and why we are taking on this amazing challenge of making the world a better place.
Before you design your poster, it’s important to know what makes a good poster. Here are five aspects that will make your poster stand out and make parents and the community notice.
1. Don’t overload your poster with too much information.
2. Try not to use more than three fonts on your poster.
3. Choose a background colour that matches the theme of your message.
4. Make sure that you have a catchy title.
5. Always include a call to action to tell the people what you want them to do.
6. A picture can tell 1000 words, so make sure you use plenty of visuals.
7. Plan out your poster on a piece of paper before you start using Canva.
8. Check everything before printing and get feedback from your friends.
SDG 5 and 6 - Weekly Round-Up!
This fun quiz will allow your students to think collectively about the natural environment and sustainability within our world.
Show the children the questions Aligned with sustainability goal numbers three and four and each week we will add this quiz to the learning sequence to build more knowledge around this topic.
This should be a fun activity with no pressure around points, scores, rankings or percentages.
The teacher is now going to show you a series of questions on the Interactive whiteboard at the front of the classroom. Your job is to try to answer the questions correctly. You can talk to the people around you to help you answer the questions.
Test your knowledge and have some fun as you try to answer these questions collectively with the people on your table or in your group. Remember, it doesn’t matter if you get anything wrong, this is purely for fun and to gain more knowledge about sustainability and protecting the environment.
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Closing Video
Now we have a clear vision of what’s going to happen over the next seven weeks. We can start to think about the roles that we’re going to play and how we’re going to accomplish these 12 actions to change the world together. Well done, everybody.
Ongoing Follow-Up Activities
Extension Activity - Buddy Program Week 4
This week, your students will work on graphic design, persuasive writing, persuasive text, and emotive language as they design a poster with their buddy.
Students may choose to use Canva as a design tool or pencil and paper is also a valid option, depending on the age of the child.
This week will involve students taking time, using patience and mentoring skills when it comes to graphic design, art and creative language.
Now that you understand the whole process of activating your community, it’s now important that you pass that information on to the younger students within your school.
This week’s mentorship Buddy Programme will involve you explaining who Rosa Parks is and what her story signified. It will also involve you explaining why this is inappropriate behaviour and why we do not see it today.
Finally, this week you will help your buddy design a poster aligned with the actions they would like their community to act upon. Depending on the age of your student, you may wish to use Canva to devise your poster or pencil and paper with colours can also be an option.
Once the poster is completed, you may wish to discuss with your body where the poster will go and what the best placement might be to get the biggest effect within your community.
Extension Activity - One Person’s Trash is Another Person’s Treasure
This is a great way for your students to start considering recycling creatively. Once they consider what the coffee cups can be useful, they may consider what other items are lying around the school and within the community that they can reconstitute to make into sustainable products that can then be used or even sold to raise money for charity organisations.
Watch the video opposite and listen to the information regarding non-reusable coffee cups and their impact on the environment.
Your objective this week is to collect as many coffee cups as you can from the people in your community. Wash, clean them and think of creative ways in which you could reuse them in your school, your home, or your classroom.
This will allow you to make sure that they are not thrown into a landfill and thus, ending up as microplastics in the ocean, in our food and in the bodies of the animals that we love. It’s time to get creative.
Here are some ideas!
Coffee cup planters: Poke holes in the bottom of the cup. Fill the cup with potting soil. Plant a sprouted seed or a cutting that has grown roots in your coffee cup. Place it on a plate or something to catch the water and dirt that drains through the holes. The cool thing about this is that when you are ready to transplant the plant into the ground, you can transplant the whole thing, cup and all
Use it as a scoop: Wash and dry your coffee cup, and use it as a scoop for pet food or garden dirt.
Paper cup lights: This is a variation on the paper cup garland. Decorate and cut paper cups. Poke one hole in each cup bottom. Grab a string of Christmas lights, and stick each light into the hole in the bottom of the cup. The cups will be like lampshades for each light on the string.
Pencil cups: You can make a really cute desk organizer by grouping paper cups together on a Lazy Susan. Cups of different sizes make this really pop, as does decorating the cups with different coloured tape. You could also decorate the cups with used images such as maps or images from magazines.
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