Workshop 3: Plants
Information for teachers
Students take on different roles as they investigate how evidence, trade-offs, and collaboration shape a more sustainable future across the environmental, economic, and social pillars of sustainability.
Environmental Sustainability: MRS in Motion
Students investigate how plants demonstrate the life processes of Movement, Respiration, and Sensitivity through scientific observation, and learning that scientists use evidence rather than guesses to understand the natural world. They then discover that while all plants share these life processes, different environments have led to different species sensing and moving in different ways to help them survive and thrive in different environments.
Students will:
- Describe how plants demonstrate the life processes of Movement, Respiration, and Sensitivity (MRS) using scientific evidence.
- Investigate plant behaviour by making observations, identifying patterns, and drawing conclusions from experiments and evidence.
- Compare how plants grow and respond in different environments, using evidence from the bean and kōwhai investigation.
Economic Sustainability: Trade Titans
Students work in teams to build the strongest economy by negotiating with other businesses to create complete plant-based supply chains from raw materials to markets. Along the way, they experience how trade, sustainable choices, and unexpected events influence the resilience of a business, and the economy.
Students will:
- Describe how supply chains connect raw materials, processing, services, and markets to create products and support the economy.
- Explain how unexpected events, changing consumer demand, and business decisions can affect industries, trade, and economic resilience.
- Evaluate the trade-offs businesses make between short-term profit, long-term sustainability, and managing future risks.
Social Sustainability: Conservation Court
Today, students become jurors in a simulated Environment Court case. They hear evidence from both sides of a proposal to replace native bush with fast-growing radiata pine, before weighing the environmental, social, and economic trade-offs to decide what they believe is the fairest outcome.
Students will:
- Evaluate the trade-offs involved in managing native and exotic forests using evidence from different perspectives.
- Explore how different stakeholders can have different priorities while still working towards sustainable outcomes.
- Justify a decision by considering environmental, social, and economic impacts and supporting it with evidence.
Throughout the day, students earn clues to solve a final logic puzzle that reveals examples of the day's learning, and how it fits together.