Ranking environmental problems
This level 3–4 teaching activity encourages students to explore various aspects of complex issues relating to environmental problems. It encourages students to consider the interaction of science and diverse community views.
About this resource
This teaching activity is a level 3–4 resource that requires students to view photos of environmental problems and rank them in severity. Students then compare answers with others and consider focus questions about how they determine whether something is an environmental problem or not.
Ranking environmental problems
Levels: 3-4
Nature of Science achievement aims: Participating and contributing
Contextual strands: Planet Earth and beyond, living world
Topic: Environmental studies
Mātauranga Māori
Mātauranga Māori has an important place in environmental management. It relies on using Māori knowledge, whakapapa, and the traditional cultural beliefs, knowledge, concepts, and values that a Te Ao Maori perspective brings.
This excerpt is taken from the Environmental Guide and describes the Te Ao Maori view on biodiversity and the environment.
“The Māori worldview considers everything living and non-living to be interconnected. Whakapapa describes these connections and tells the story of how people, the landscape, plants, and animals came into being. People, plants, and animals are all descendants of Ranginui (the sky father) and Papatuanuku (the earth mother) and their children, which means humans are therefore intrinsically linked with biodiversity. The concepts of mauri (life force), mana (authority or power), tapu (sacred and restricted customs), and wairua (spirit) are important to consider in relation to both people and nature. The tangata whenua (people of the land) have a role as kaitiaki (guardians) to preserve the mauri, wāhi tapu (sacred sites), and natural taonga (treasures) in their area. Kaitiakianga includes active stewardship or guardianship of the land, with Māori traditionally having their own system of resource management to sustain people and natural resources for the future. The relationship between the health of the ecosystem and the wellbeing of the people can be demonstrated by the following phrase: Ko ahau te taiao, ko te taiao, ko ahau. (The ecosystem defines my quality of life).”
- Ngāti Wai and Ngāti Whatua
Learning activity
- Nine "problem" pictures for ranking.
See Materials that come with this resource to download:
- Environmental problems (.pdf)
- How do you decide what an environmental problem is?
- What sorts of things affect your view of what an environmental problem is?
- Will your judgement of environmental problems be the same as other students’ views? Will they be the same as scientists’ views?
- What questions do you need to ask to determine if something is an environmental problem?
- How do you determine which problems need more urgent attention?
- In groups, give students access to the problem cards.
- Discuss with them what each card depicts, and have them share their ideas about why this might be a problem.
- Tell them they will be ranking the cards in order of most-to-least-severe problem. As a group, they need to establish their group’s criteria for making these decisions (this may include the context of the problem, that is, local, national, or global).
- Get students to rank the problem cards according to their criteria in a diamond pattern.
- Have them compare their rankings with the other groups and give reasons for their ranking decisions.
- For each problem card, get students to brainstorm about what scientists will need to find out in order to address the problem and begin to seek a solution.
- Did all groups have the same card in the most positions? Why/why not?
- Which problem do you think scientists would think of as the most severe? Why? How might you investigate this? (For example, invite a scientist to talk to the class.)
- What other work do scientists do besides solving environmental problems?
- Do you think we should rely on scientists to take care of our environmental problems?
- How much choice do you think a scientist has in what they decide to investigate?