Warm-up activities

A game to encourage working together to achieve goals and plan for action. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of world views and futures. Curriculum connections include:

• Science
  • How scientific understandings, discoveries, and inventions inform personal and community decisions
  • How the values and needs of contemporary society can influence the focus of scientific research
  • Earth's renewable and non-renewable resources
• Humanities
  • How people with shared beliefs and values work together
  • How values can promote cohesion
  • Contemporary examples and issues relating to Australian democracy and global citizenship

Resources:

• Various soft balls and/or resources to create soft balls (e.g., twine, felt, tape)

Roles:

• Open (after reflection, you may decide you represent different stakeholders)

Activities:

• Optional: Begin by creating the different balls to represent different environmental resources. Alternatively, use ready-made balls.
• Pass/throw the balls to each other. If a ball touches the ground, that resource becomes damaged. After three touches, remove the resource. Play for a while without further rules, then reflect on the questions below and experiment with suggestions.

Reflective questions:

• What is being represented by the balls and what happens to them? By different students?
• What would you expect to happen if one person and/or a small group held onto the balls?
• What do you suggest to ensure that everyone gets a fair share of the resources, and the resources stay protected?

Try out everyone’s suggestions and see what happens.

A game suited to areas affected by urbanisation and agriculture. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of systems, design and futures. Curriculum connections include:

• Science
  • How living things are affected by their environment
  • Environmental and human influences on places
  • Interactions between interdependent organisms
• Humanities
  • Environmental and human influences on places
  • The challenges of managing and planning Australia's urban future
  • Effects of people's choices on places and implications for the future

Resources:

• A large open space (indoors or outdoors)
• 2 or more 'habitats' – large blocks, areas taped out or identified with markers, etc.
• Multiple 'wildlife fragments' – objects of varying sizes that students can safely stand on (e.g., blocks, pieces of cloth, large sheets of paper, etc.) spread out through the space
• 3-4 identifying tags for 'predators'

Roles:

• Marsupials – most of the class
• Predators – 3-4 students

You may like to be specific (e.g., ‘bandicoots’ and ‘foxes’) or develop your own roles.

Activities:

• All marsupials begin in one of the habitats. Marsupials are safe in the habitat but there is not enough food for all the marsupials to stay. You need to find ways to move between the different habitats. You are safe when standing on a wildlife fragment. If marsupials are on the ground, you can be tagged by a predator and are out of the game.
• All predators begin on the ground. Predators can move anywhere but can only tag marsupials if the marsupial is standing on the ground. If a predator cannot tag a marsupial within one minute, you are out of the game.
• If the predators manage to tag more than half of the marsupials, the predators win. If all the predators go out, the marsupials win.
• Begin the game with large habitats and plenty of wildlife fragments. Gradually reduce the size of the habitats and/or the number of fragments.
• Experiment with different strategies to see what happens

Reflective questions:

• What do the different roles/objects in the game represent?
• What would you expect to happen if all fragments between the habitats were removed?
• What do you suggest to protect the marsupial population? Try these suggestions out.

A game suited to areas with plants and/or animals affected by infectious diseases. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of systems, world views, and futures. Curriculum connections include:

• Science
  • How scientific understandings, discoveries, and inventions inform personal and community decisions and help to solve problems
  • How scientific knowledge develops and changes as new evidence becomes available
  • How the values and needs of society can influence the focus of scientific research
• Humanities
  • How the colonial presence has influenced the environment and the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
  • Significant societal challenges
  • Long term causes, short term triggers, and intended and unintended effects of significant events and developments

Resources:

• Optional: Art/craft supplies to represent species, diseases, and preventions/cures.

Roles:

• Population – most of the class
• Epidemiologist – 1-2 students

If you are specifying the population species, draw on your local context. You could be humans – our risk for infectious diseases is increasing due to climate change – or a local animal or plant species such as koalas with chlamydia, eucalypts with myrtle rust, or parrots with psittacine beak and feather disease. Alternatively, leave the population unspecified until the reflection.

Activities:

• Optional: Create props/costumes to represent the roles. Alternatively, you can use actions to represent the species and infection (e.g., koalas become blind, eucalyptus’ leaves and branches die back, parrots develop beak abnormalities and lose feathers).
• Send the epidemiologist(s) out of the room. Choose a student to start with the disease and an agreed upon way to spread the infection (e.g., winking, shaking hands, blowing a kiss).
• Invite the epidemiologist back in. All students move around the space in character. Once students are infected, you can infect others.
• The epidemiologist tries to identify anyone who is infected, and to work out how the disease is being spread. Once the epidemiologist has correctly identified someone as infected, they can no longer infect others, but they will still show symptoms. The aim is to stop the disease from spreading to everyone in the classroom.

Reflective questions:

• What do the different actions/roles represent?
• What would you expect to happen if there were no epidemiologist? Or if the gap between being infected and showing symptoms is increased? Try out different possibilities.
• What do you suggest to stop the spread? Try out different suggestions, using props/costumes to represent possibilities if appropriate.

A game suited to areas where natural, wild resources are regularly fished, hunted, and/or harvested. Students will engage with the sustainability concepts of systems, design and futures. Curriculum connections include:

• Science
  • How living things are affected by their environment
  • Earth's renewable and non-renewable resources
  • The nature of ecosystems
• Humanities
  • Environmental and human influences on places and the management of spaces
  • Human causes of land degradation and the implications for places
  • Interconnections between food production, land and water degradation, shortage of fresh water, competing land uses, and climate change

Resources:

• A large open space (indoors or outdoors)
• Optional: Fishing rods/nets (or other hunting/harvesting tools) – soft balls, long pieces of cloth, etc.

Roles:

• Fish (or other species to be hunted/harvested) – most of the class
• Fishing boats (or hunting/harvesting parties) – 2-5 students

This game is originally intended to representing overfishing; however, if another issue of overhunting/overharvesting is relevant to your context, adapt as appropriate.

Activities:

• The fish swim through the ocean (the space). The fishing boats stay on one spot. If a fishing boat can tag a fish, they become part of the fleet and help to catch others.
• Reflect on the game using the first question below, then ask students to predict and experiment with the following:
  • The size of the ocean
  • The number of fishing boats at the beginning of the game
  • Whether the fishing boats use ‘pole and lines’ (their own arms), ‘trawling nets’ (long cloth held between two boats), or ‘longlines’ (soft balls thrown at the fish).
  • Having different fish species (you may like to set up an ecosystem!) with some being desirable catch and others being ‘bycatch’.

Reflective questions:

• What is being represented by the fish being caught and becoming fishing boats?
• What would you expect to happen if…[suggested experiments]?
• What do you suggest to keep the fish population at a sustainable level? Try out students’ suggestions.

A starting point for exploring and developing sustainability ideas, themes, and concepts through Visual Arts practices. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of systems, design, world views and futures. Curriculum connections include:

• Visual Arts
  • Explore visual arts practices as inspiration to explore and develop themes, concepts, or ideas in artworks
  • Generate, document, and develop ideas for artworks

Resources:

• Sustainability sticks: at least 20x popsicle sticks (collect and clean used ones, or use bamboo sticks), small stones, leaves, or some other sustainable item. These can be pre-prepared, or created as a class (instructions given below) as a separate activity.
• Students' journals
• Pencils

Activities:

• Create the Sustainability Sticks (can be pre-prepared or done as a separate class activity).
  • Divide the sticks into four categories based on the sustainability concepts: systems, futures, design, and world views. Colour the sticks so that each category is clearly visible (e.g., red, yellow, blue, and green).
  • On each stick, write a word associated with that category. Examples are given below, or you can brainstorm ideas as a class.
    • Systems:
      • Geosphere: Ocean floor, rocks, sand, continents, volcanoes, mountain ranges, deserts, lava, soil
      • Biosphere: Fungi, animals, plants, insects, predators, parasites, bones, faeces, compost, bacteria, forests, wetlands, ocean trenches
      • Hydrosphere: Oceans, lakes, rivers, rain, ice, snow, clouds, dew, fog, creeks, springs, groundwater
      • Atmosphere: Nitrogen, oxygen, gas, helium, methane, hydrogen, breath, burp, fart, carbon dioxide
    • Futures:
      • Equitable: Fair, impartial, just, honest, reasonable, stable, unbiased
      • Sustainable: Continuing, viable, feasible, green, renewable, livable, worthwhile, supportable
      • Inclusive: Holistic, comprehensive, nondiscriminatory, respectful, sensitive, considerate
    • Design:
      • Products: Biodegrable furniture, recycled cutlery, edible coffee cups, bamboo toothbrushes, insect hotels, upcycled clothes and shoes, cultured meat, indoor ecosystems, mushroom helmets, seaweed-based plastic alternatives
      • Environments: Passive architecture, wildlife corridors, rehabilitated environments, parks, marine protected areas, walk and bike lanes, public transportation, green roofs, five-minute neighbourhoods, biosphere reserves
      • Services: Recycling, reducing, reusing, upcycling, addressing food waste, crop rotation, agroforestry, integrated pest management, composting, renewable energy (solar, wind, hydrogen, geothermal, tidal, biomass)
    • World views:
      • Attitudes: Accepting, anxious, calm, committed, detached, empathetic, miserable, passionate
      • Values: Respect, freedom, justice, cooperation
      • Beliefs: 'Everyone has the capacity to change', 'I am insignificant', 'I have the power to change my circumstances', 'Life is unpredictable'
  • Draw a stick from each category to create a drawing prompt. For example, 'Mountain ranges' + 'livable' + 'mushroom helmets' + 'Everyone has the capacity to change'.
  • Students have 2-7 minutes to draw whatever they like inspired by this prompt. Keep drawings quick and low-pressure. Students can choose just one of the words, or try to combine two or more of them. The Sustainability Sticks are just a starting point -  students do not have to stay with the words you have drawn out. If they have a better idea, go for it!

A starting point for thinking about sustainable Visual Arts practices. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of design and futures. Curriculum connections include:

• Visual Arts
  • Experiment with materials, techniques, technologies, processes, and conventions

Resources:

• Nothing, a whiteboard and markers, OR students' journals and pencils (depending on how you wish to organise the game)

Activities:

• Provide a topic or theme such as materials, techniques, technologies, processes. With younger students, keep the topic generally to 'visual arts'.
• Go through the alphabet, coming up with a sustainable visual arts material, technique, technology, or process for each letter. This can be done:
  • Collectively: Create a list as a whole class
  • Competitively: Divide the class into two groups, and see which group can complete the whole alphabet first
  • Individually: Students write their lists in their journals

Students may find it difficult to decide whether a material, technique, technology, or process is sustainable. That's OK! Discuss and research any debates to find out more. You may also like to create an alphabet of non-sustainable visual arts materials, techniques, technologies, and processes.

The letter of the alphabet can apply to any part of the material, technique, technology, or process. For example:

A: Activist art

B: Bamboo paintbrushes

C: Clay

A starting point for responding to and interpreting sustainable art. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of design and world views. Curriculum connections include:

• Visual Arts
  • Analyse how ideas and viewpoints are expressed in artworks and how they are viewed by audiences
  • Investigate ways that visual conventions, visual arts processes and materials are manipulated in artworks across cultures, times, places, and/or contexts
  • Investigate First Nations Australians' artworks and art practices

Resources:

• Images of sustainable artworks. These might be artworks that are not harmful to the environment, artworks that address sustainability topics, or both. For example, Indigenous artists' reflections on climate change, Aboriginal artists' recycling of ghost nets, and other mind-blowing eco-artists
• Students' journals
• Pencils

Activities:

• Project the image or a zoomed in section of the image. Ask students to:
  • Share a story of what they think the artwork is about
  • Guess what the artwork is created out of
  • Imagine how the artist came to create this artwork
  • Predict what will happen to this artwork
  • (If zoomed in) guess the whole image
  • Draw their emotional response to the artwork
  • Draw a thought or question that they have
  • Draw an action that the artwork makes them want to take

A starting point for creating and displaying artworks on sustainable themes. You will engage with the sustainability concepts of world views and design. Curriculum connections include:

• Visual Arts
  • Create and display artworks, considering how ideas are expressed to an audience

Resources:

• Paper
• Pencils
• Optional: Collage materials

Activities:

The basic exquisite corpse activity is well known:

• Each student begins with a piece of paper which they fold into three equal parts.
• On the top section of the paper, students draw or collage the head of an imaginary character, extending the lines of the neck just over the edge of the fold. Set a time limit (e.g., two minutes).
• Students fold their image back to conceal it, then pass the paper onto the person next to them.
• With their new sheet of paper, students add a body, again extending the image just past the edge of the next fold.
• Again, students fold their image back and pass to the next person, who adds the legs and feet. Unfold the paper to reveal the full creature.

To adapt this activity to the topic of sustainability, you could:

• Give students a theme using your sustainability sticks. You could use the same theme for the whole drawing, or give a different theme for each part. For example, the head might be inspired by a volcano, the body by public transport, and the legs/feet by anxiety.
• Ask students to draw the environment around the creature, either as they go or as the final step.
• Draw an environment instead of a creature. The drawing might begin as a sustainable environment and become less so, or vice versa.
• View these examples to see how exquisite corpses can be adapted for animation