Using Games

and Play

WWW.CONVERSECONSERVE.COM

TURNING LESSON PLANS INTO GAMES

Aim - Help students tune in and switch over

to environmentally friendly behaviours

How

Bringing Climate Change TO LIFE through

games, activities and dramatization.

Students develop the SUBJECT MATTER and help younger

ones design –

Activity Books with COLOURING IN, WORD SEARCHES,

CROSSWORD PUZZLES with eco themes.

= Peer Education or children leading their own education

CROSSWORD, PUZZLES, QUIZZES

Q. How effective are passive, mono-chrome

images?

Puzzle Recipe –

1. Add words connected with our earth, current campaigns, and the learning about it.

2. Add Spice/Colour!

Reference Notes:

Good Wood (Source: Green Peace –Good Wood Guide)

Smart Meter – pinpoints peak energy periods

Nude Food (Campaign to reduce packaging in School Lunches)

Crossword Puzzle

Themes can be simple as

the one shown. The puzzle

teaches a basic concept

with four or five words to be

guessed.

WHY GAMES AND PRACTICAL PROJECTS ?

Games and competitions can be adapted to a wide range of climate change and pollution scenarios & themes

Involve small or larger numbers of people

Build in collaboration, team-work, working towards a common goal

Games create SUSPENSE and excitement making the learning experience fun and MEMORABLE.

GAMES ENGAGE THE SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND BY … ?

• Being Creative

• Being Repetitive (Subliminal even)

• Engaging the Competitive Spirit

• And by inviting Laughter they make us

• Let Our Guard (and Hair) Down

• And Make us More susceptible to new

ideas and emotional responses

Adam Alter, author of, Think Tank Pink, 2013 and Martin Lindstrom, author of

Buyology, 2010 assert that SUB-CONSCIOUS signals such as -

colour, NAMES, backdrops, symbols and our overall environment

influence us much more than conscious signals and messages.

Educators in Sustainability are using peer education, games (board/active),

creative projects and all forms of play to get students actively as well as

subconsciously tuned in to sustainability behaviours.

City of Yarra

Put In Bin

(Series)

EXPERIMENT WITH CLIMATE CHANGE/POLLUTION IMPACTS

Place colourful PICTURES or SIGNS on bins (facings) to see if this encourages people to use them? Research one week where bins have no pictures and one week with pictures – are there any changes in bin use?

Hang Bells on Doors at your School or local Shopping Centre to see if people use the Manual Doors instead of Automatic (electrically powered) ones. (Get permission from the facility, first!)

Dress up Bollards around the borders of Parks to see if this promotes slower, safer driving.

City of

Yarra

Put In

Bin

(Series)

Drive With Heart campaign. Melbourne, Australia.

Park side decorated bollards to slow traffic.

Drive With Heart campaign. Melbourne, Australia.

Park side decorated bollards to slow traffic.

GAMES PROMOTING CLIMATE CHANGE MINDFULNESS

1. Endangered Species Balloon Game

2. Sustainable Foods Word Game

3. Climate Change Olympics

4. Tram it.. Train … Bus … or Car It ?

1. Endangered Species Balloon Games

Research and select ONE climate change affected species Half the group inflates

balloons and then sketches that endangered species on to each inflated balloon.

Other half of the group researches the key reasons behind the 'selected species' being

listed as endangered. They bring in to class old T Shirts and paint threats to that species

on to T Shirts.

Example, if the balloon has a sketch of an ORANGUTAN on it, then the research group

draw pictures of burning forests or Palm (Oil) Trees on to T Shirts. Object of the game is

for the keepers of the Balloons to keep the Balloons in play without letting the ones

wearing the T Shirts get hold of the balloons.

Assuming these are available, set up goal posts where the Balloons get tossed to safety,

past the source of 'endangerment.' With this game, the object of the game would be to

keep extending the distance each time that the balloons have to be thrown to get to

safety.

2. Sustainable Foods Word Game

GUESS THE FOOD - Kids try to guess the food with

questions that have YES or NO answers - aim to include

some questions with ecological content.

Prompt cards could be used with eco hints - eg recycling,

extinction, free range, factory farm, water consumption,

Eg to guess a Fish - the student asks Animal,

Vegetable/Fruit to guess a fish- then asks “Is it a fish that

is caught wild in the sea or is it farmed?’, ’Is it a pest (eg

carp) or are there a shortage of them in the ocean (eg

tuna, salmon)?’ To guess eggs or meat - ’Is it a factory

farmed food? ‘Can you grow the food source at home?’

Pole and line

Over-fishing

Croprotation

Nitrogen fixing crops

Grass-fed -Grain-fed

Sumatran Tiger Habitat

3. Climate Change Olympics

Sustainability Olympics.

Each student represents a country and researches any action that country is taking to lower carbon emissions.

The students who can convincingly put forward the most environmental credentials in terms of climate change action, on behalf of their chosen nation, WINS!

A large map of the class is pinned up on the blackboard, so that people take turns to find the country on the map. (Doubles as a geography lesson!)

4. Train it …Tram .. Bus or Car It?

A game for up to 10 to play who are familiar with public transport

use and one adult driver with a vehicle.

Select destination - aim of the game is to have people travel in

pairs to see which mode of transport is most time efficient. Ideally

time it with a driver who is already going in that general direction.

A game to play particularly at traffic peak times to show that public

transport can be a speedier mode of transport at these times.

Climate Change Quizzes

Lifestyle Facts …. PAST

How lifestyles have changed –Guess the carbon friendly games and activities and the decades they were played in

eg Knuckles and Darts, Ring 0 Roses, Home-made Go karts – ? 1940s, ?1950s, ?1960s, All of the Above

Lifestyle facts - PRESENT

Which causes the most emissions – (a) drying hands for 10 seconds in

a Dyson Airblade dryer or (b) consuming one paper towel? ((a) or (b))

Ironing 5 shirts per week for a year causes the same emissions as

one drive in an average car of 17 kilometres? (True/False)

Boiling a cup of water in an electric kettle consumes more energy than

water in a pot on a gas stove? (True/False)

(ANSWERS: (b), True, and False - Source: How Bad Are Bananas –

The Carbon Footprint of Everything, Mike Berners-Lee

CARBON HISTORY – more lifestyle changes

Challenge the group to come up with 10 ways lifestyles today are more carbon polluting than for previous generations:

Eg. In the 1960s /70s in Australia milk was delivered by horse drawn truck in refillable milk bottles. Compare the ways that milk is supplied today.

Consider holiday destinations today, preparation of food, changing sizes of cities and the distances travelled to work, visit family/friends, sports’ activities.

Compare sourcing of clothes, toys etc in past and present.

In the game: the first one to come up with 10 changes – WINS!!

Then students draw pictures to demonstrate these changes.

WORKSHOP AND DRESS UP FOR CLIMATE CHANGE!

DRESS UP AND WORK SHOP FOR CLIMATE

WORKSHOP EXAMPLE

Children can make up stories about where the dung beetle, worms bees and all the other critters go when we over-develop our gardens, remove plants and trees, pests multiply in mono-cultural environments. Get dressed up as a dung-beetle and expand upon the reasons that trees

are important carbon sinks and ways in which the top-soil affects the biosphere and bio-diversity.

Make up short dramas designed around symbiotic processes.

WORKSHOPS AND DRESS UPS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE!

Stills from Outsmart Invasive Species Project marketing You Tube Video

SYMBIOTICS GAME

1. Decide which plants or living species to imitate

2. Plan the life cycle or analysis and interactions between species

3. Create a drama between the species and each student plays a part to demonstrate symbiotic relationships, mutualism, neutralism, competitive, and other biological interactions between species

4. Gather your props – eg sticks, feathers, masks ….. And ad lib.

CELEBRITY SCRAP BOOKS

Select your favourite celebrity – actor, model, social advocate or climate campaigner.

Research your chosen celebrity’s lifestyle

Paste photos in to your scrap book, and tell a story about how that celebrity has adapted and changed their lifestyle to make a positive climate change difference.

Interview your peers after one – two months – to see whether the celebrity’s positive role modelling affected your own behaviour.

Keri Russell, actress with her

bicycle which she uses as her

main mode of transport in New York. Her partner, actor Matthew

Rhys was also captured on

camera promoting a fold-up

electric bike.

SUB-CONSCIOUS INFLUENCES IN SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

‘By bringing learning on to a more sub-conscious level, we are prompting a stirring up of the desired (emotional & sub-conscious) responses in sustainability education.

Drivers of behaviour change are complex and are never based on rational forces or influences, alone.’

Nicolle Kuna – Creator of Website www.Converse Conserve.com

FOR MORE EDUCATIONAL GAMES AND LINKS

Our Website -

www.converseconserve.com

By: Nicolle Kuna and contributors

Don’t forget to LIKE this Slide Share Presentation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Written content on this SlideShare is Copyright: Nicolle Kuna

Thanks go to: Wikimedia Commons for sharing under Creative Commons –

photograph of Polar Bear,

black and white diamond puzzle

Photography by Calle Eklund/V - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA

3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Ring O’Roses book cover by L. Leslie Brooke

Thanks go to CERES, Brunswick for allowing us to photograph the Kingfisher image, and the Outsmart Invasive Species Project for You Tube Video – All other photos by Nicolle Kuna.

And Google Images for photograph of Keri Russell with bicycle