Stage 1 Human Society and Its Environment

Stage 1 Human Society and Its Environment.

Unit: Transport

Foundation Statement
Students recount important family and community traditions and practices. They sequence events in the past and changes in their lives, in their communities and in other communities.
Students explore the composition of a number of groups, including Aboriginal peoples, in their community and recognise that groups have specific identifying features, customs, practices, symbols, religion, language and traditions. They acquire information about their local community by direct and indirect experience and communicate with others using various forms of electronic media.
Students make comparisons between natural, heritage and built features of the local area and examine the human interaction with these features. They investigate the relationship between people and environments including the relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the land. Students use the language of location in relative terms and construct and use pictorial maps and models of familiar areas.
Students identify roles, responsibilities and rules within the family, school and community and explore their interaction. They describe how people and technologies link to produce goods and services to satisfy needs and wants.
Overview: This unit provides opportunities for students to explore transport systems in their local area.
The unit focuses on the benefits and responsibilities of transport use.

Outcomes and Indicators

SSS1.7
Explains how people and technologies in systems link to provide goods and services to satisfy needs and wants.
ü  Explains how people help them
ü  Depicts and labels components of a system designed to meet needs and wants, eg model of a transport system
ü  Examines the impact of a system on lifestyle and on the environment
ü  Outlines social and environmental responsibilities when operating in or using a system. / ENS1.6
Demonstrates an understanding of the relationship between environments and people.
ü  Evaluates the results of human activity in environments relevant to them
ü  Describes interactions with the environment that can affect their life or the lives of others
ü  Identifies ways that places in their immediate environment have changed and are continuing to change.
Resources:
¨  The Board’s website (http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au) lists current available resources such as some selected background information sheets, websites, texts and other material to support this unit.
¨  Pictures showing a wide variety of forms of transport (eg hot-air balloon, train, snow plough, space shuttle) powered by a range of energy sources.
¨  Transport toys and models.
¨  A large map of the local area, drawn by the teacher or provided by the local council.
¨  An excursion to local transport facilities, including interviews with workers at each location, eg railway station, bus depot, repair garage, ferry wharf, police station (or invite these people to visit the class).
¨  A variety of visual texts, such as large pictures, newspapers or video clips from news programs, that show problems caused by transport and suggested solutions. / Links to other KLA’s:
¨  English: The structure and language features of the text types students create and interpret (see above).
¨  Personal Development, Health and Physical Education: Road safety, including passenger, pedestrian and bike safety.
¨  Science and Technology: Content from the Built Environments and Products and Services strands examines the impact of transport systems. The units ‘Getting About’ (Stage 1) and ‘Out and About’ (Stage 2) include learning experiences that are relevant to this unit.
¨  Creative and Practical Arts: Role-playing people who use and work with transport systems. Portraying the components and links of a transport system through creative movement.
¨  Mathematics: 3D models of modes of transport.

Learning Experiences

Week 1 / Learning Sequence 1: Introduction – How Transport Makes Links
ü  Pose the problem: How would you get koalas from a bush land reserve in Australia to a zoo in Japan? Show students a globe to locate Australia and Japan and explain that there are oceans that they will need to cross.
ü  Ask students, in groups, to try to solve the problem. Have them record and present their solutions. Question the students about the role that transport would play in their solutions.
ü  Introduce the unit, ‘Transport’: How does transport affect people and the environment?
ü  Ask students to suggest how they could find out about transport and its effects. /

Date

Week 2 / Learning Sequence 2: Reason For Transport – Why Do We Need Transport?
ü  Provide students with pictures of different forms of transport. Ask them to label each form, indicating what it can do for people and the environment.
ü  Display the labeled pictures, read the labels and question the students to identify the variety of needs that people have for transport.
ü  Provide opportunities for students to use models of transport to simulate moving goods between places or providing services.
ü  Ask students to add additional information to the pictures of the different forms of transport, ie purpose, features. Discuss situations where people would be affected if certain forms of transport were not available. Have students develop consequence charts.
ü  Have students, in groups, discuss and complete the sentence: ‘We need transport so we can …’ /

Date

Week 3-4 / Learning Sequence 3: Transport System – What Makes a Transport System?
ü  Categorise transport shown in visual texts, eg pictures or photographs, into road, rail, air, water or pedestrian transport.
ü  Provide groups of students with visual texts from one of the categories.
ü  Have groups study the pictures/photographs and draw a mind map of all the people, signs, buildings, facilities, businesses and so on connected with that category of transport.
ü  Ask students about the transport facilities in the local area. Use a large map to locate these. Identify places that will be visited during an excursion, eg railway station, ferry wharf, bus depot, airport, service station, NRMA, smash repairs, stock yard.
ü  On the excursion, focus students’ attention on facilities and help them to identify components of the transport system that are linked, eg road signs and pedestrian crossings. Have students interview people connected with the transport system about: their roles; how the form of transport that they are connected with helps people; what is necessary for the system to work, eg coordinated planning of facilities such as taxi, bus and car-parking facilities near a railway station; coordinated timetables; what problems the system can cause for people and the environment; rules that people should follow when using the system; and the costs involved, eg materials, staff, maintenance.
ü  Have students recount experiences shared during the excursion and ask them to add new information to the students’ mind maps.
ü  Develop a retrieval chart of the people interviewed and their roles in the transport system.
ü  Have groups construct and label a model or diagram of the transport system and explain how the components link.
ü  Ask students to explain, and/or demonstrate on their models, what could happen if components of the transport system changed, eg if traffic lights malfunctioned, if roads were flooded, if a bike had a flat tyre, if a new bridge were built. /

Date

Week 5-6 / Learning Sequence 4: Benefits of Transport – How Does the Transport System Help Us?
ü  Referring them to labelled pictures and information gained from the interviews on the excursion, ask students to list the ways in which transport helps people.
ü  Refer to the retrieval chart recording the excursion interviews. Explain that these people all work in the transport system so that they can earn money. Add to the list ‘Transport helps people earn money’.
ü  Read or jointly view texts about truck drivers, fire fighters, police officers and/or ambulance drivers to learn how they use forms of transport to help people. Interview or contact these people to find out more about their work.
ü  Jointly (or have students independently) write information reports about the ways in which different forms of transport help us. An illustration with labels may add to the information provided in the information report. / Date
Week 7 / Learning Sequence 5: Transport Problems – How Does Transport Cause Problems for People and the Environment?
ü  Referring to interviews recorded during the excursion, ask students to list, on a retrieval chart, the problems for people and the environment caused by transport systems.
Transport / Problem / Effects on People / Effects on Environment
ü  Read and discuss texts about air pollution, noise pollution, road accidents or habitat destruction. Incorporate issues that are relevant to the students’ local area or of interest to them.
ü  Organise groups of students to study one or two pictures, or video clips from news programs that show problems caused by transport, eg air pollution over a city or town; noise pollution; stacks of rubber tyres; derelict cars;, accidents; oil spillage; water pollution from road drains; habitat disturbance; and graffiti on trains, railway stations and bus shelters.
ü  Have groups identify how the problems shown in the pictures have been caused by transport, how these problems affect people and the environment, and some possible solutions. Have students prepare and present their findings and proposed solutions. I / Date
Week 8 / Learning Sequence 6: Responsible Transport Citizens – How Can We Be Responsible Transport Citizens?
ü  Refer students to the excursion interviews. Ask them to list responsible behaviours when using road, rail, air, water or pedestrian transport.
ü  Arrange for students to interview a police officer or road safety education officer about bicycle and pedestrian safety and/or a bus operator about responsible bus behaviour and/or an environmental education officer about the environmental impact of transport. Add the information obtained to earlier lists.
ü  Have students role-play safe pedestrian, bicycle and bus behaviour. / Date
Week 9-10 / Learning Sequence 7: Culmination
ü  Discuss how the lives of students and others in the community would change if there were no motorised transport. Students could design a mode of transport that is not motorised.
ü  Have students present, at school assemblies, their suggestions for how school members can be responsible users of transport. / Date
Assessment:
Evaluation: