Activities
- Suggested duration: 20 mins
- Technique used: Paired simulation
- Materials required: None
- Aim of activity: To encourage students to think about seeing things as others do
- Underpinning components: UC 6.3
- Connection with other competences: Values; Transdisciplinarity
Short description
Person A: Talk about yourself to your partner. Person B: Now imagine you are Person A based on what you have heard and introduce yourself as if you are Person A. Now try the same in reverse. How did that feel? Listening to the other person speak as you? Speaking as the other person?
- Suggested duration: 20 mins
- Technique used: Group discussion
- Materials required: Flipchart paper and marker pens
- Aim of activity: To encourage students to reflect on the different between understanding others, sympathy and empathy
- Underpinning components: UC 6.1
- Connection with other competences:
Short description
Group activity. In your group, divide a piece of paper into 3 columns. Head one column ‘Understanding others’. In this column write words that help describe understanding others. Head the next column ‘sympathy for others’. Underneath, write words that help describe/define this. In the final column, write empathy. Write words that help describe/define empathy. What do you see as the difference between these three?
- Suggested duration: 10 mins
- Technique used: Group discussion
- Materials required: A variety of photographs/pictures
- Aim of activity: To encourage student awareness of how others might be feeling
- Underpinning components: UC 6.3
- Connection with other competences:
Short description
Group activity. Students are shown a selection of pictures containing people in a range of different situations. Students discuss how they think each of the characters are feeling and why they think that.
- Suggested duration: 15 mins
- Technique used: Personal reflection
- Materials required: A variety of photographs/pictures
- Aim of activity: To encourage students to develop self-awareness
- Underpinning components: UC 6.3
- Connection with other competences: Attentiveness
Short description
Students are shown different pictures relating to sustainability and asked to record their emotional responses. They then discuss in groups these responses – why they felt like that, how they recorded them, how they tend to react to things.
- Modelling: Ask learners to discuss a problem and construct a model to show futuristic sustainable solutions to the problem. (e.g. Autonomous flying Microrobots: RoboBees)
- Research activity (Exploring the past for a sustainable future / Lessons from the past for a sustainable future). Short description: Identify an SD issue that is of interest to the learners and ask them to explore through literature, the media, and/ or other qualitative research methods the practices followed in the ancient times, in the recent past and nowadays. Finally ask learners to project into future practice and imagine how this practice may change. Discuss the sustainability dimensions of each possible future scenario.
- Greening of cities (problem solving): How an overpopulated city where only 4m of green corresponds to each citizen, can increase green spaces to 15m2 per citizen which is the recommended space of green for ensuring better quality of life? Elaborate future senarios that present different solutions and how these might be considered from different perspectives. Different techniques and methods that can be used for problem solving include research, simulations, survey, modelling etc.
- Suggested duration: 40-60 mins
- Technique used: Role play – integrating jigsaw technique
- Aim of activity: Develop problem solving skills through collaborative processes in a realistic context, (that would help learners reflect on future consequences and alternative futures).
- Underpinning components: UC5.3a; UC5.3b
- Connection with other competences: Attentiveness; Systems; Transdisciplinarity
Short description
Simulation /Role play: Provide a scenario explaining the current situation of an SD problem. Suggest a number of alternative solutions to the problem. Assign roles to the learners and ask them to collaborate following the jigsaw collaborative approach to examine each alternative through the different lenses of the different roles and reach a consensus on the most suitable solution.
- Suggested duration: 30-40 mins
- Technique used: Debate
- Materials required: Handout or script with scenario
- Aim of activity: Develop decision making skills through collaborative processes in a real context, (that would help learners undrestand the importance of preparing individuals competent to participate and shape our common future).
- Underpinning components: UC5.2a; UC5.2b
- Connection with other competences: Action
Short description
Debate: Provide a scenario explaining an existing current problem in your city. The solution will clearly affect the citizens in the future (in terms of economy and nature) and a decision needs to be taken by the city board members. Provide the two alternative solutions to the problem (e.g. road cuts through the park or road goes around the park). Ask the learners to explore how either solution can affect the lives of the citizens, as well as discuss the SD dimensions of each solution. Form groups according to the solution they support and set a debate on which solution should be followed.
- Suggested duration: 15 mins
- Technique used: Futures projection
- Materials required: Post-it notes and flipchart paper
- Aim of activity: To encourage students to think about how things might evolve in the future
- Underpinning components: UC5.1b; UC5.3a
- Connection with other competences: Attentiveness; Systems
Short description
Using post it notes, students jot down ideas for things that might occur in the future with a suggested year and put it on the time line. Plenary discuss projections, why people made them and if they can be categorised into different types of predictions.
- Suggested duration: 30-40 mins
- Technique used: Discussion
- Materials required: Script to read, flipchart paper and marker pens
- Aim of activity: To help students imagine positive alternative sustainable futures
- Underpinning components: UC 5.1a; UC5.1b
- Connection with other competences: Attentiveness; Action; Creativity
Short description
Close your eyes and sit in silence – relax. Now listen for 10-15 minutes while someone asks you to imagine yourself in 30 years time but imagine it is a positive future. Tell the class/group that they should think of themselves as the age that they are today but the year is 20xx. Now, with a series of pre-planned statements and questions, take them through the process of waking up, asking details about what their bed is like, what they have for breakfast, the clothes they wear (and where they bought them). Ask them to think about the work they might be doing or the school they might be attending; what job might they hope to do? How do they travel? How do they talk to friends and connect with family? What are they planning to do that evening? Allow plenty of long pauses between each question so people have time to imagine the details and think about how it feels, sounds, tastes, smells. After a final long pause ask the group to open their eyes and share with their neighbour or small group, the things they imagined or envisioned. Give each pair/small group a sheet of flip-chart paper and marker pens and ask them to illustrate their ideas so they can share with the wider group. After sharing and now back in pairs/groups, think about the first steps that you will need to take in order to start the journey towards that positive future.
NB This can be a very emotional experience for some people. Be sensitive to the impact it can have and be sure that everyone has the support they need when they ‘come back’ to the present.
- Suggested duration: 20 mins
- Technique used: Cumulative brainstorm
- Materials required: Flipchart paper and marker pens
- Aim of activity: To help students reflect on the current state of the world and how we got here
- Underpinning components: UC5.2a; UC5.3b
- Connection with other competences:
Short description
Small group activity. Half of the groups write ‘Good things about the world as I see it’ the other ‘Concerns about the world as I see it’ in the middle of their sheets and then brainstorm and write on their sheets things that come to mind. Groups then swap sheets and see if they agree with comments made and if they have anything else to add. Plenary discuss the sorts of things that came up, feelings, commonalities, differences and to make the point that sometimes the things that people like are other people’s concerns. Take one example as a whole group and discuss how that came about.