Findon Primary School played host to yet another educational experiment in August 2013. The La Trobe Wildlife Sanctuary visited the school for a session on Sustainability. The school had been undertaking an inquiry unit on economics and wanted something to tie their activities into sustainability.
So, the Sustainability Game was launched. This game was very similar to online games that students can play on their own, but we wanted something that would engage students in conversations around sustainability. The concept was quite simple, but the ideas and process was quite complex, so we were a bit concerned as to how the grade 4/5 students (and teachers) would take to the game.
The game follows a seasonal timeline where students are able to place a component of a new town onto a 'blank' patch of land - in this case a blank piece of A0 butchers paper. Students take turns adding, houses, parks, shops, council chambers, factories and pretty much anything they think would belong in a town.
Set Up
The students start with a playing board (butchers paper) and set up all the playing cards in piles. They are allocated $1500 and 200ml of the three main resources (Materials, Energy and Water). A marker is placed on the Play Card in the 'Summer' position.
Play starts by the first student in the team (of 4-6 students) placing an infrastructure card on the play board. Resources are then subtracted from their supply and discarded in the pollution bucket. The market is then moved to the next season and the second student takes a turn.
The catch is students a limited amount of resources in which to construct their town and decisions need to be made about minimising resource use or impact.
For example a standard house will cost 10ml in resources, 10ml in electricity and $50k to create, whereas an Eco house cost a bit more, but running costs are much less.
The Purpose
This is not a game for determining a winner or loser, it is not a game where a team of students create the ideal 'ecotopia'... It is a game that is designed to draw out conversation and negotiation skills in students and promote a team approach to problem solving. Along the way there is loads of manipulation and calculation skills, so it is great in developing students understanding of measurement.
Student and Teacher Feedback
The most significant (unexpected) feedback on our first test run was that all students were fully engaged in their discussions. Once students got their heads around the concept, it was about an hour of total immersion. Jack, a grade 4 student was keen to get his team installing Eco Houses because 'we can save heaps and we also get some pollution back'... ' we chose to put this into Energy, because we were running a bit low'. Mary commented on the game saying 'We ran out of materials really early, which meant we had nothing left to build a council chambers'.
Teachers commented on how engaged the students were. Alyson saying that it was much better than on-line, similar activities, because the students were engaged with each other as well as the game.
- Andrew Stocker (Senior Coordinator Education Services)
