Activity Introduction
Quick summary: Students investigate and evaluate the various ways natural disasters are communicated to design a safety kit for their home to share with family and friends.
Subjects: Design and Technology.
Year Level: 7 & 8.
Topics: Creative Thinking, Sustainability, Climate Change and STEM.
Teaching Time: 70 minutes.
21st-century skills:
Australian Curriculum Mapping
Content descriptions:
Year 7 & 8 Design and Technologies:
- Analyse how people in design and technologies occupations consider ethical and sustainability factors to design and produce products, services and environments (AC9TDE8K01)
- Analyse needs or opportunities for designing, and investigate and select materials, components, tools, equipment and processes to create designed solutions (AC9TDE8P01).
Syllabus outcomes: T4.1.2.
General capabilities: Literacy, Critical and Creative Thinking.
Cross-curriculum priority: Sustainability.
Relevant parts of Year 7 & 8 achievement standards: Students explain how social, ethical, technical and sustainability considerations influence the design of innovative and enterprising solutions to meet a range of present and future needs. They explain how the features of technologies influence the design and production decisions. Students explain a range of needs, opportunities or problems and define them in terms of functional requirements and constraints. They collect, authenticate and interpret data from a range of sources to assist in making informed judgements.
Level of teacher scaffolding: Low – Facilitate classroom discussion.
Resources required:
- A device capable of presenting a video to the class.
- Ipads or devices capable of connecting to the internet and viewing websites and watching videos
- Materials – coloured card, blank white paper, scissors, tape, glue, coloured pencils, snap-lock bags
- Student Worksheets – one copy per student.
Related Professional Development: We encourage you to undertake the free PD Course How to teach a unit on fire and flood resilience for tips on how to best deliver this lesson.
If you’re concerned about the challenging nature of these topics, consider the free PD Course How to approach trauma in the classroom for information on how best to support your students.
Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.
