Author: Dr Danielle Hradsky
Danielle is a drama/arts educator and researcher, gardener, and bushwalker. She is passionate about the power of the arts to create change in education, particularly in the areas of (re)conciliation, de/colonisation, and sustainability. Danielle lives and works on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nations.
Year Level
Primary F-6
Secondary 7-10
Learning Areas
Drama
Science
Geography
History
Sustainability Areas
Climate change
Earth’s resources
Ecosystems
First Nations knowledges and perspectives
Futuring
Habitats
Human impact
Species introduction/removal
Worldviews
Focus Question
How is balance maintained in relationships within a habitat? What roles can humans play in maintaining or disturbing this balance?
Workshop Description
This F-10 unit provides opportunities for young people to embody a local ecosystem and experiment with changes to that system. The unit uses drama strategies such as dramatic play/role-play and process drama to represent the relationships between plants, animals, and places, and the roles of humans (positive and negative) in change over time. Students take on a variety of roles including consumers, producers, and decomposers, as well as humans interacting with the environment. This unit offers opportunities for students to understand how a local site has changed and could change over time and to make proposals for its balanced management in the future.
Timeframe
1-2 hours depending on the age of the students and the complexity level reached (can be broken over several lessons)
A shorter version of this game can be found in the ‘Warm-ups’ (Predator-Prey Balance)
Resources (not all needed for every version)
- Game instructions and game elements (see pdfs)
- Chairs (at least one per student)
- Masks, tags, or sashes to indicate different animals
- Coloured tokens (blue, green, yellow, brown, and/or red)
- Music
- Dice (1-2)
- Access to a local habitat/ecosystem (can be on school grounds