Activity 5: Historical snapshots

The purpose of this activity is to give students the opportunity to

• understand the history of South Stradbroke Island
• consider attitudes to land management over time
• understand ecological sustainability

Length and implementation of activity

Part A: The students will form into groups to represent the different time periods in the island's history (about 10-15 minutes).

Part B: They will depict the main activities of that period in a series of freeze-frames (see below). A spokesperson for each group will narrate the history and also explain to the rest of the class the attitudes towards land-management at the time (about 20 minutes). Students should be encouraged to see those attitudes within the context of the time period, and not to judge the people of the time by modern attitudes.

Part C: After the presentations, the class discusses how the effects of those attitudes to land management compare to the effect of modern ideas of sustainability (20-30 minutes). Each student will then do an individual exercise that uses the information from the activity to speculate about the future for the island (in their own time).

The freeze-frame strategy used in this activity may need explanation to students. A freeze-frame consists of a series of frozen actions that tell a story or explain a situation. In this activity, students represent different time periods in a tableau or frozen image. A narrator explains what happened at that time, and the students slowly change to new positions as the story unfolds. Each position is held for up to 10 seconds only. There may need to be two or three different positions taken before the narrator finishes. Props may be used to help explain the role of the characters involved.

Teachers Notes

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Students Notes

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References

Students will refer to the information in the History section of this web site.