Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10-20 minutes - Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge
10-20 minutes - Part B: Identifying Needs Through Observation
30+ minutes - Part C: Identifying Needs Through A Survey (plus time for conducting survey)
10 minutes - Reflection

Part A: Activating Prior Knowledge

Begin the lesson by recapping the premise of permaculture design.

Explain that permaculture is a set of agriculture and social design principles that aim to create a more sustainable society. Permaculture creates designed solutions for how we grow the food and fibre for the products in our everyday lives, so that they better catch and use energy, manage water and build communities.

If you didn’t complete the previous lesson in this unit, you could provide students with a copy of the Permaculture Ethics And Principles worksheet which describes the ethics and principles of permaculture, and gives an example of how each principle might be applied to a community garden setting. In addition, this 3-minute animation provides a great introduction:

How Can Permaculture Change the World? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inTNaAgtX80)

Part B: Identifying Needs Through Observation

Step 1.

If you completed it, remind students that last lesson they looked at a real-life proposal for a permaculture project in Zanzibar (Case Study - Permaculture Project In Zanzibar) or through the Australian case study (Case Study - Permaculture Project In Australia). Explain to students that throughout the rest of the unit they are going to start looking at and developing ideas for possible permaculture projects that could be implemented in their own school

Students will be participating in the processes by:

Identifying the needs of their school community.
Investigating permaculture based solution to these needs.
Developing a plan for their project.
Pitching their plan to their target audience (see note below).

The permaculture project is to be designed with the intention that it will be used and maintained by students over subsequent years, to continually serve the school community and help build an understanding of the way permaculture project can benefit all of us.

Finally, explain to students that although this is a class-wide project, each student should take responsibility for collecting evidence and artefacts about the work that they put into the project, including drafts of everything they create as part of the project and records of any opportunities they pursue (either successfully or unsuccessfully). The most important thing for students to remember is that the PROCESS of working through this project is really important – perhaps even more than the final product. Students should aim to demonstrate the growth and learning that they experienced both personally and as a group as a result of facing the challenges inherent in a project of this type. Ensure each student has access to a workbook throughout this unit to record their contributions and ideas.

Step 2.

The first step in this process of creating a permaculture project is to identify what the school community needs. This process is called a ‘needs assessment’.

Ask students ‘How do you think we can we find out what our school community needs?’ and invite them to share their responses.

The responses may include:

Surveys
Observation
Interviews

Explain that they are going to use a combination of observation (looking closely at the school community from their own perspective) and surveys (to collect quantitative data about other people’s experiences and opinions).

Invite students to consider which of the 12 principles of permaculture this step of the planning process might relate to, and to reflect on why it is important.

Step 3.

Now, write the following themes on the board: Food, Waste, Energy, and Community. Explain to students that they are going to start their needs assessment with observation. This will require them to recall their own experiences about the themes on the board, as well as conduct new observations. Remind students that the aim of the needs assessment is to find out what the school community needs, not what they would personally like to see happen.

Invite students to work in pairs or small groups to think about the school community and identify any challenges or needs relating to these themes. Students can record ideas in their workbooks.

Once complete, invite students to share their thoughts with the class, record key points on the board near the corresponding theme.

You could also choose to take students to the area of the schoolyard where you would like them to design their garden. Students could then complete the observation task at this site, using pens and paper to record their ideas.

Part C: Identifying Needs Through A Survey

Step 1.

Now, explain to students that they will work in groups to identify the needs of their school community by conducting a survey. Working in groups, students will develop a survey, collect responses, and use the information to design a permaculture solution for one of the themes on the board.

Before beginning, ensure that students understand the difference between the terms 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' in relation to surveys:

Quantitative - data that can be counted or measured, and therefore can be easily compared. Questions used to collect this kind of data could include multiple choice, yes/no, or number ratings.
Qualitative - information that relates to the quality of something. This kind of information often includes people’s thoughts and opinions.

Step 2.

Invite students to form working groups of 3-4. These will be their groups for the next two lessons (if you choose to do this lesson in sequence), so make sure students are in groups with peers that they work well with.

Explain that students will create their surveys in the online program, SurveyMonkey (or a similar survey making service of your choosing). This program will allow them to build a survey with up to 10 questions. These questions should collect quantitative data (i.e. the answers are multiple choice, number scale, drop down menus, etc.).

If access to an online survey tool is unavailable, you could invite students to create their surveys using pen and paper or in word.

Step 3.

In their groups, invite students to choose three themes from the board (Food, Waste, Energy, and Community) that interest them.

Encourage students to start drafting questions in their workbooks that will help them find out more about how others in the school feel about those themes.

They will need to include questions to find out the following information:

Who completed the survey? Find out if they are a teacher or student, in senior or junior school, etc.
How important do they feel the themes are? They could rate them with a number.
What areas of the school would they like to see improved? You could provide them with multiple choice answers.
What values do they think are important?

You could also distribute copies of the Survey Design Tips factsheet to help students create their questions.

Invite the students to choose 10 of their drafted questions to use in their survey.

Step 4. Options:

Encourage students to get as many people to complete their survey as they can before then.

Step 5.

Once students have completed their surveys, invite them to return to their working groups and either log on to their SurveyMonkey accounts or access their surveys. If using SurveyMonkey, ask them to open their surveys and click on ‘Analyse results’. Here, students will be able to see the results of their surveys as graphs and as percentages. In the toolbar on the left of the page, you can also add filters to the results, opting to split the data in certain ways (e.g. only see results from students or only from teachers, etc.).

If students have conducted their surveys using pens and paper, invite them to analyse their results by looking for patterns in their data (e.g. numbers of similar responses), and to think about how these results could be conveyed (e.g. as a percentage figure, as a graph, etc.).

Students can then record results in their workbooks using full sentences. For example:

“80% of survey respondents stated that they highly value sustainability.”
“60% of survey respondents identified the tuckshop as an area of the school they would like to see improved.”

Step 6. Differentiation:

If you are not planning on continuing on with the next lesson in this unit: Consider inviting students to think about the best ways to visually represent the data they collected, for example through graphs or tables. Invite students to create an infographic or poster that describes the results of their survey and that displays their data in visual form. This task could be completed as homework or in a subsequent lesson.

The following Professional Development course has some great tips on how to bring students' data to life, Visualise Data in the Secondary Classroom.

If you are planning on continuing with the next lessons in this unit: Explain to students that the next task will be to look at the responses from their surveys and begin designing solutions for the challenge they identified. They can do this by:

Recording the list of needs they have identified from their observations and from the survey in their workbooks. They can list these in bullet form.
Once students have recorded their list of needs in their workbooks, invite them to form pairs with someone from a different working group. This activity will help students to clearly explain why they have reached certain conclusions:
- Invite one student to tell the other what conclusion they have drawn the list of needs and results of their survey.
- Encourage other students to ask: “What makes you say that?” Invite the first student to provide a one sentence explanation. The other student can then continue to ask “What makes you say that” until the proposition has been fully explained. Then, invite students to swap positions and complete the activity again.
- Explain to students that in the next lesson they will begin developing design ideas to address the needs they have identified.

Reflection

Invite students to work independently to respond to the following (also available on the Student Worksheet):

Three things I found interesting about the results of our needs assessment.
Two questions I now have about the results of our needs assessment.
One permaculture based idea I have for addressing one point raised in the needs assessment.

Differentiated Learning

Extension: If students finish early, they can begin brainstorming solutions to the needs identified through their observation and survey. If you are planning on completing some or all of the remaining lessons in this unit, this information can be used and elaborated on in this lesson.

Provisions for Learning Support: Students who require extra support can work in smaller groups or pairs for group activities.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Creative Sustainability - Identifying Community Needs

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