The Oasis - HPE - Years 9 & 10 - Building Empathy and Understanding

Activity Introduction

Quick summary: Students watch Part 8 of THE OASIS and identify the social and emotional challenges that young people experiencing homelessness face. Students empathise with a character’s experience of homelessness by assuming his or her persona, creating a Facebook profile and feed based on the perspective of their chosen character. Students complete a series of questions reflecting on the emotional toll that being homeless takes.

Key ideas to explore:

Homelessness can impact on an individual’s health and well being.
Students examine a more realistic view of homelessness.
There are ways to effectively address and challenge negative stereotypes about youth homelessness.

Australian Curriculum Mapping

Learning Area: Health and Physical Education

Content descriptions:

Evaluate situations and propose appropriate emotional responses and then reflect on possible outcomes of different responses (ACPPS094)
Evaluate factors that shape identities and critically analyse how individuals impact the identities of others (ACPPS089)

General capabilities: Critical and Creative Thinking, Ethical Understanding, Literacy, Personal and Social Capability.

Syllabus Outcomes: PDHPE5.1, PDHPE5.3, PDHPE5.11, PDHPE5.13, PDHPE5.16.

Topic: THE OASIS, Social Issues

Unit of work: THE OASIS – HPE

Time required: 60 minutes

Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – facilitate discussion.

Resources required: Student Worksheet – one copy per student OR computers/tablets to access the online worksheet. Device capable of presenting websites/videos to the class and access to THE OASIS documentary on Vimeo. Facebook template.

Digital technology opportunities: Digital sharing capabilities.

Homework and extension opportunities: Includes opportunities for extension.

Keywords: House, home, homelessness, youth, THE OASIS, community development, social, emotional, well being, health, Facebook, profile.

Acknowledgement: This resource has been adapted from ‘Teaching Social Issues Through English’ developed with English Teachers Association NSW and the ‘Youth Homelessness Matters Resource’ developed by Janice Atkin. You can find these resources here.

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

Worksheets

Teacher Worksheet

Teacher preparation

Overarching learning goal: Students develop empathy towards people who experience homelessness. They understand that homelessness has a negative impact on personal health and well being. They identify some of the social issues that people face while experiencing homelessness.

Teacher content information: This lesson is based on THE OASIS documentary, which raises awareness of youth homelessness, celebrates the resilience of young people who are experiencing homelessness in Australia and empowers the next generation of young people to take action to prevent youth homelessness in the future.

Young people often become homeless because of family breakdown, often stemming from parental conflicts or a collapse of their relationship with a husband/wife or partner. Some young people who are living independently become homeless because they can’t afford living expenses such as rent. Being homeless is unsafe, unhealthy and very stressful. Young people experiencing homeless

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Student Worksheet

Thought starter: Practice the skill of dealing with difficult and challenging situations.

1. While watching Part 8 of THE OASIS, select a specific character and complete the table below in reference to him or her:

THE OASIS - Part 8 (https://vimeo.com/147551639)

You could choose either:

Haley
Tommy
Owen
Emma
Chris

to focus on while filling in the table below:

The character:
The situations shown in the clip:
How might the character feel while in the situation?
How did the character respond to others?
The character’s interaction with the community:

2. Complete a 'day in the life' based on your chosen character in the form of a series of Facebook entries.

You could use this Facebook template.

Include status updates, images, memes, liked pages and conversations with other people - each entry should be an expression of your character's thoughts and opinions.
Show through the posts the sorts of things that your charact

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Activity: The Oasis – HPE – Years 9 & 10 – Building Empathy and Understanding