HaSS Year 4 Curriculum Links: Sustainability

1. Science

1.1. SCIENCE UNDERSTANDING: Living things depend on each other and the environment to survive (ACSSU073) Students silently read "Habitat: What Animals Need to Live." Using a Venn diagram with the three main words (herbivore, omnivore, carnivore) listed, have students refer to article to define each word. Write the definition for each word onto the overhead showing that herbivores eat plant parts, carnivores eat other animals, and omnivores eat both plants and animals.

1.2. BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: Living things have life cycles (ACSSU072) Students are taught about how fruits, vegetables and crops are grown and taken care of and the importance of growing your own vegetables. In groups students complete a Growing Potatoes Science Investigation where they will take care and record the growth of their potatoes.

1.3. CHEMICAL SCIENCES: Natural and processed materials have a range of physical properties that can influence their use (ACSSU074). Investigate properties of plastics used to make products such as DVDs and skateboard wheels. Identify the properties needed to make an electric kettle ect. Test a range of properties such as melting point, tensile strength and flexibility. Find out which plastic is most suitable for each product. Plastics - (TLF L2526 v9.0.0)

2. Visual Arts

2.1. Use of visual art elements and selection of materials, media and/or technologies to create specific artwork (ACAVAM111) Students collect natural resources such as leaves, grass and soil and create an art piece of their favourite season of the year.

2.2. Use of techniques, art processes and exploration of art forms such as monoprinting, sculpture or ceramics (ACAVAM111) Students create natural prints with air dry clay. Students choose a leaf or flower they think will create a nice pattern. Students can then use the clay as a pendent for necklaces or bracelets for their mothers on mother day.

2.3. Responses to their own and others’ artwork, reflecting on meaning using visual art terminology (ACAVAR113) Students view different artists and the art work they created using recycled materials. As a class they make assumptions about the messages the artists are trying to send to their audiences. Use artists such as "Bristol Whales" by Sue Lipscombe and "Plastic Planet" by Calder Kamin.

3. Music

3.1. Development of performance skills (singing in tune, playing classroom instruments with correct timing and technique, incorporating some dynamics; maintaining own part at correct pitch and tempo when performing with others) (ACAMUM086) Students learn and preform the Earth Day song at their schools assembly to encourage the school to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Earth Day: The Environment and our Planet in a Song for Kids! I Love to Learn with PlayKids

3.2. To compose and perform music (ACAMUM084) In groups students write a song about an issue such as pollution, waste ect. They take turns to preforming their song to the class, where they will be judged and the winner performs the songs at assembly.

3.3. Reasons why and how people make music across different cultures, events or occasions (ACAMUR087) As a class students listen to songs that have address the issues of sustainability all around the world and create a vocabulary list in their music book to help them write their own song in the next lesson

4. Humanities

4.1. QUESTIONING AND RESEARCHING: Locate and collect information from a variety of sources (e.g. photographs, maps, books, interviews, internet) (WAHASS28). Students are broken up into groups of 4 where they are asked to use different types of information to research the effects of pollution in Australia and create a poster of their choice to display their findings.

4.2. GEOGRAPHY: The Earth's environment sustains all life The importance of environments to animals and people, and different views on how they can be protected (ACHASSK088) The teacher and students take a walk around their school, where they will identify the types of animals that inhabit their space. Students then brainstorm on the board ideas of how these habitats could be effected by the school students and interaction/ pollution and ways to reduce the issue.

4.3. GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY: The importance and purpose of laws (e.g. to maintain social cohesion, to reflect society's values) (ACHASSK092) Students research and discuss examples of laws that reduce waste/ pollution in Australia and different countries and why they are important to students’ lives.

5. English

5.1. TEXT STRUCTURE AND ORGANISATION: Recognise how quotation marks are used in texts to signal dialogue, titles and quoted (direct) speech (ACELA1492) Students write a short story in first person about how they became ‘Waste Warriors,’ Students must use dialogue correctly at least once in their story.

5.2. INTERACTING WITH OTHERS: Plan, rehearse and deliver presentations incorporating learned content and taking into account the particular purposes and audiences (ACELY1689) Students research ways to live sustainably and create a powerpoint and presentation to persuade their class mates to make small differences in their lives.

5.3. EXPRESSING AND DEVELOPING IDEAS. Incorporate new vocabulary from a range of sources into students’ own texts including vocabulary encountered in research (ACELA1498) As a class students create a list of vocabulary words for the topic of Sustainability, the teacher writes the word on the board and discusses the definition with the class. Students record the words in the back of their english book in which they can refer to throughout the topic.

6. Digital Technologies

6.1. COLLECTING, MANAGING AND ANALYSING DATA Collect and present different types of data for a specific purpose using software (ACTDIP009) Students collect a variety of objects that are usually thrown away. In groups of three or four ask students to predict the order in which each object will decompose. Ask students to try to predict how long they think each item will take to degrade and create bar graph represent data.

6.2. CREATING SOLUTIONS BY: Investigating and defining Define a sequence of steps to design a solution for a given task (WATPPS21) The school has run out of money to buy more play equipment for the kindy and preprimary students. Students need to create a piece of play equipment using only recycled material found at home or school.

6.3. REPRESENTATION OF DATA: Data can be represented in different ways (ACTDIK008). In this lesson sequence students survey and collect data concerning what is brought to school each day and what becomes rubbish. They then use Excel to represent that data in a variety of different ways.