Activities

We all rely on the environment for food, air, water, and much more. This means that we share the responsibility for what happens to it. Rate your own lifestyle to see how you score as an environmental citizen.

SCORING: Beside each item below, indicate whether you do these things:

Always - 5 points, Sometimes - 2 points, Never - 0 points

1. I take water to school in my own water bottle instead of buying bottled water.

2. I use both sides of paper before recycling it.

3. I learn about nature by reading or by visiting parks and natural sites.

4. I take short showers and use a low-flow shower head.

5. I walk, ride, rollerblade, carpool, or use public transit as much as possible.

6. I turn off lights and computers when I am not in the room.

7. I talk to my parents about energy conservation.

8. I take my used clothing and books to second-hand stores.

9. I pick up garbage on the street when I see it.

10. I stay informed about environmental issues because I care.

Total = ______

(Acronym: Role, Audience, Format, Topic)

From: daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/file/view/RAFT_w-intro.pdf

RAFTs are literacy strategies that encourage creative thinking by viewing topics from different - and often quite unusual - perspectives. This strategy also compels students to think about and interpret information rather than just write answers to questions. In the RAFT strategy, the students play a role. In that role, they have to respond to a specific audience using the format assignment as they write about the topic.

How to use R.A.F.T.:

• Establish the writing topic by considering whether particular ecological relationships, connections, and/or larger contexts would become clearer through this kind of exploration. The topic can be expressed as a creative title, e.g., “I’m all choked up” or simply stated, e.g., “The water cycle.”

• Think of possible roles that students could assume in their writing. For example, a student in learning about the water cycle might imagine being a water molecule experiencing its trip through a leaf’s stomata.

• Next, decide the audience for this communication. With the audience in mind, determine the writing format. For example, the water molecule could be writing in the format of a travel guide to be read by water molecules that are still trapped in the soil.

• Explain RAFT as a means to stimulate students' writer's imagination in communicating what they’ve learned about the topic. Provide several choices, listing the role, audience, format, and topic for the writing assignment. Alternatively, you may want to give them a choice of different roles but have them all write about the same reading or concept.

RAFT assignments can also be the basis for expression through drama, dance, music, and multimedia presentations.

After experimenting with perspectives-taking through roles in RAFT, check out GRASP for specific strategies for brainstorming real world, rich performance tasks as well as lists of roles/careers, products or performances, and audiences, GRASP performance tasks offer the evidence needed to assess students’ understanding of content, development of skills, and their application to real world contexts. 

An example:

GRASP: Developing Ecological Literacy through Rich Performance Tasks

A tool for developing ecological literacy through rich performance tasks (TDSB, 2007) has been written to help teachers introduce an ecological literacy dimension to their program. Planning rich performance tasks takes time, but teachers who have done this work say that they are a powerful and meaningful way to frame expectations for students and plan lessons. A rich performance task can gracefully integrate clusters of expectations from several disciplines so that teaching and learning have a purpose that students can readily understand.

This resources contains tools to help teachers frame their educational goals so that they develop students’ ecological literacy through teasing out the human-nature interconnections. They cast the performance task in a realistic scenario that involves role play and awareness of audience, and culminates in a persuasive presentation or product. The scenario sets the stage for critical thinking and problem solving in tackling the performance tasks. 

Once you have settled on an idea for the performance task, use the chosen task as a compass to guide you in selecting and developing lesson plans, resources, field trips, visits to the school ground, and other learning opportunities that will enable your students to successfully achieve what you have set for them. (For several examples, see A Day with the Trees tool.)

And finally (the most difficult step to make time for!) reflect on the experience to recall how well this process worked.

An example: