Understandings,+Concepts+and+Focus+Questions



The key concept we want our students to understand are that we are custodians of our planet and as such should aim to improve it for future generations. Living sustainability is one way towards achieving this. Over four weeks we are looking at four alternative ways to achieve this:
 * Key Concepts**
 * An investigation into food packaging
 * Water conservation and recycling
 * Reducing the distance that the food we buy has travelled (food miles)
 * Recycling kitchen waste: what makes compost?


 * Understandings**:
 * The economic decisions we make have local, national and global consequences.
 * We should be able to justify personal values and attitudes about issues affecting the economy, society and environment.
 * Values are important in order to become engaged and active citizens within a community.
 * Our environment is diverse.
 * All living things need to have sustainable relationships with each other and their environment.


 * Focus Questions:**
 * Food packaging creates mountains of landfill every year in Australia: What can we do to reduce the amount of packaging we throw away and how can we reduce the amount of waste we send out in our bins?
 * Why is it important to reduce, Reuse and Recycle in today's society?
 * We hear the expression "Think globally - act locally": What does it actually mean and How can we "act locally"?
 * Water is a finite resource and water storage levels are at the in lowest in many years. Is it our responsibility to conserve water?

The following skills will be developed by the conclusion of this unit:
 * Skills to be developed: **
 * **Analysing**
 * **Checking**
 * **Classifying**
 * **Cooperating**
 * **Considering options**
 * **Designing**
 * **Elaborating**
 * **Estimating**
 * **Explaining**
 * Generalising
 * Hypothesising
 * Inferring
 * Interpreting
 * **Justifying**
 * **Listening& speaking**
 * **Locating information**
 * **Making choices**
 * Note taking
 * **Observing**
 * **Ordering events**
 * **Performing**
 * Persuading
 * **Planning**
 * Predicting
 * **Presenting**
 * **Providing feedback**
 * Questioning
 * Reading
 * Recognising bias
 * **Reflecting**
 * **Reporting**
 * Responding to
 * others’ work
 * Restating
 * Revising
 * **Seeing patterns**
 * **Self-assessing**
 * **Sharing ideas**
 * Summarising
 * Synthesising
 * Testing
 * Viewing
 * **Visually representing**
 * **Working independently**
 * **Working to a timeline**
 * **Writing**