EEO311 Learners Living in their world Humanities

SCOPE & SEQUENCE UNIT PLANNING

Duration: 10 weeks
STUDENT NAMES: Olivia Adcock (213031304) and Belinda Catanese (213140825)

Topic: Sustainability
Year Level: 2

Key Concepts/Values
How we can look after our environment?
What does it mean to be sustainable?

Big Idea: That we need to look after our environment

and where we live.

Teaching proposal
Sustainability is an important aspect of the curriculum and needs to be taught in schools. The Australian Government
declared in 2010 that education for sustainability...leads to students developing an overall capacity to contribute to a
more sustainable future in terms of environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society for present and future
generations (cited in Cutter-Mackenzie, 2014). This statement suggests that sustainability is a major issue that affects
not only our environment but also the people living in it, and therefore it is vital that children learn how to protect and
preserve it. At level 2, students are working towards the overall goal of developing the knowledge, skills, values and
worldviews necessary for people to act in ways that contribute to more sustainable patterns of living (AusVELS, 2015).
For this reason, we developed specific key understandings and skills that have been put forward in our lesson sequence.
The Sustainability Curriculum Framework states that education for sustainability is both present and future oriented
(Australian Government, 2010), and therefore we ensured that our lesson sequence not only gave students an

understanding of sustainability and the effects of unsustainable actions, but provided students with the knowledge and
skills that they can take and put into practice, to allow them to contribute to a sustainable future for themselves, and
others. Our lessons encouraged students to explore questions, issues and problems of sustainability, especially in
contexts relevant to them and their communities (Gilbert, 2004).

We planned our sequence so that initially sustainability was looked at from a broad and more global perspective. This
allows students to gain a basic understanding that sustainable patterns of living rely on the interdependence of healthy
social, economic and ecological systems (Australian Curriculum, 2015). We then took this basic understanding and
encouraged students to understand that their everyday actions contribute to their own individual environmental
footprint, and that in order to reduce any negative impact they need to aim towards reducing [their] environmental
footprint to improve the liveability of our society (Australian Government, 2010). Then, once they understood that
they can and do in fact have an influence on sustainability, the final sequence of lessons allows them to explore ways in
which they can be sustainable individuals, and even allows for them to implement some of these strategies in the
classroom, by planting their own produce, cooking recipes with locally sourced ingredients and even actions as simple
as introducing a recycling bin in the classroom to enforce the concept of reduce, reuse, recycle. The very final stage of
the lesson sequence gives the students a chance to reflect on and to validate their understanding and personal
meaning of what they have learnt in class in a blog (Petre, 2014). By running a student led conference with teachers
and parents this encourages students to participate actively in the evaluation of their academic progress, and allows
students to accept greater personal responsibility for learning and increase the students' ability to share personal
achievements and accomplishments with teachers and parents (Borba & Olvera, 2001). This stage is important, as it is
a way of consolidating their learning, which acts as a form of assessment for the teacher to evaluate the students level
of knowledge, and to compare this to their pre assessment, which took place informally at the beginning of the
sequence, where students completed a KWL chart, stating what they already know about the topic.

Understandings:

Key Skills

At the end of this unit, students will understand that:

At the conclusion of this unit students will be able to:

1. Sustainability is the connection between economies,

society and the environment.

2. They each have an environmental footprint

Recognise sustainable ways of living

Plant and grow their own produce
Cook healthy and sustainable foods that are sourced from
local produce
Create their own blog

3. Growing their own produce is a sustainable way to

source their food

4. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a vital part of a sustainable

world
5. We need to be aware where our food we buy comes
from
6. There are many ways that we can be sustainable
people.