Activity: Earth Hour: Action Stations – Digital Storytelling

Quick summary: Students will be asked to create an advertisement for Earth Hour in the form of a video, infographic, image, poem or story. The advertisement should explain about how climate change is affecting your favourite food or farming region of Australia. The resources include planning worksheets that may be followed by students in Years 7 – 10.

This lesson has been created in partnership with WWF-Australia. Earth Hour is the world’s largest community-driven climate change campaign. At the centre of Earth Hour is switching off lights to show a commitment to taking action. Thousands of teachers use Earth Hour’s education program to enrich their curriculum and provide pathways for young people to create change in their world. This lesson was originally developed to help support students entering the Earth Hour Schools Competition 2015. Although this competition is now closed you could use this lesson as part of a class-wide competition.

For the most up to date Earth Hour dates, times, and events, check here.

Learning goals:

• Students grasp the purposes of Earth Hour, both around the globe and in Australia
• Students devise creative ways to conduct and celebrate Earth Hour
• Students create a piece of digital storytelling that inspires others about Earth Hour

General capabilities: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability, Critical and creative thinking, Personal and social capability, Ethical understanding.

Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability – OI.6.

Australian Curriculum content descriptions:

Year 7 English

• Plan, rehearse and deliver presentations, selecting and sequencing appropriate content and multimodal elements to promote a point of view or enable a new way of seeing (ACELY1720)
• Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts, selecting aspects of subject matter and particular language, visual, and audio features to convey information and ideas (ACELY1725)
• Use a range of software, including word processing programs, to confidently create, edit and publish written and multimodal texts (ACELY1728)

 Year 7 Geography

• Present findings, arguments and ideas in a range of communication forms selected to suit a particular audience and purpose; using geographical terminology and digital technologies as appropriate (ACHGS053)

 Year 8 English

• Investigate how visual and multimodal texts allude to or draw on other texts or images to enhance and layer meaning (ACELA1548)
• Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that raise issues, report events and advance opinions, using deliberate language and textual choices, and including digital elements as appropriate (ACELY1736)Use a range of software, including word processing programs, to create, edit and publish texts imaginatively (ACELY1738)

 Year 8 Geography

• Present findings, arguments and ideas in a range of communication forms selected to suit a particular audience and purpose, using geographical terminology and digital technologies as appropriate (ACHGS061)

Year 9 English

• Create imaginative, informative and persuasive texts that present a point of view and advance or illustrate arguments, including texts that integrate visual, print and/or audio features (ACELY1746)
• Use a range of software, including word processing programs, flexibly and imaginatively to publish texts (ACELY1748)

Year 9 Geography

• The challenges to food production, including land and water degradation, shortage of fresh water, competing land uses, and climate change, for Australia and other areas of the world (ACHGK063)
• The capacity of the world’s environments to sustainably feed the projected future population to achieve food security for Australia and the world (ACHGK064)
• Present findings, arguments and explanations in a range of appropriate communication forms, selected for their effectiveness and to suit audience and purpose; using relevant geographical terminology, and digital technologies as appropriate (ACHGS070)

 Year 10 English

• Create sustained texts, including texts that combine specific digital or media content, for imaginative, informative, or persuasive purposes that reflect upon challenging and complex issues (ACELY1756)
• Use a range of software, including word processing programs, confidently, flexibly and imaginatively to create, edit and publish texts, considering the identified purpose and the characteristics of the user (ACELY1776)

Year 10 Geography

• The human-induced environmental changes that challenge sustainability (ACHGK070)
• Present findings, arguments and explanations in a range of appropriate communication forms selected for their effectiveness and to suit audience and purpose, using relevant geographical terminology and digital technologies as appropriate (ACHGS079)

Syllabus Outcomes: GE5-2, GE5-3, GE5-5, GE4-8, GE5-8, EN4-2A, EN4-4B, EN4-6C, EN5-1A, EN5-2A. 

Time needed: 70 minutes.

Resources required: Internet, Student Worksheet, Earth Hour 2015 – climate change and food factsheet.

Key words: Climate change, Earth Hour, impacts, future.

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