Activity: Get out your pens people! Year 3 & 4

Quick summary: Students brainstorm energy issues in their school community. They use the ‘Ranking Ladder’ thinking tool to assist in organising their ideas about energy issues from most important to the least important issues. Students select the issue that they are most passionate about and communicate their ideas and opinions with a letter writing activity to their school Principal, Council or other leadership group.

Key lessons and understandings of activity:

• Students build creative and critical thinking skills
• Students explain their ideas to communicate effectively with other people.
• Students discover that opinions are important and can be communicated to a range of people. Our school community needs to find out what the opinions of people are.  

Australian Curriculum Mapping

Content descriptions:

Year 3 English:

• Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features and selecting print,and multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (ACELY1682)

Year 3 Science:

• Represent and communicate ideas and findings in a variety of ways such as diagrams, physical representations and simple reports (ACSIS060)

Year 4 English:

• Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts containing key information and supporting details for a widening range of audiences, demonstrating increasing control over text structures and language features (ACELY1694)

Year 4 Science:

• Represent and communicate ideas and findings in a variety of ways such as diagrams, physical representations and simple reports (ACSIS071)

Syllabus Outcomes: ST2-4WS, EN2-2A. 

General capabilities: Critical and creative thinking, Literacy. 

Topic: Energy

Year levels: 3 and 4

Indoor or outdoor activity: Indoor

Time required: 15+ mins

Learning areas addressed: Civics and Citizenship, English, Geography.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Assist students in letter writing, help student organise ideas and construct sentences.

Resources required: Internet access and letter writing materials.

Homework and extension opportunities: All or parts of this activity can be set as homework.

Keywords: Energy, community, communication, letter writing. 

Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.