World Heritage in Our Hands

An Education for Sustainability and social studies unit

Year 9, 10	Level 5	Duration 2 weeks

Key environmental concepts	Learning outcomes
Interdependence Personal and Social Responsibility for action	Students will develop: knowledge and understanding of the World Heritage global concept, including sites and their selections.
Social studies strand and achievement objectives	Learning outcomes
Place and environment Why particular places and environments are significant to people.	Students will be able to: explain, using examples, what cultural and natural heritage means. identify places of global, national and local heritage. show why and how some places are chosen by people as heritage sites. give an example of how the global community strives to protect such sites.
Processes	Learning outcomes
Values Exploration Social Decision Making	Students will be able to: identify criteria that lead to specific actions. make choices about preferred actions and justify that choice.
Requirements
Settings(s):	New Zealand and Beyond
Perspectives(s):	Multicultural; Current Issues; the Future.
Essential Learning About New Zealand Society (ELANZS):	The location and significance of important natural and cultural features of the landscape
Social Studies in the New Zealand Curriculum www.tki.org.nz/r/socialscience/curriculum/index_e.php

Assessment

Assessment activity. (Word, 32kb)
Assessment schedule. (Word, 34kb)

Teaching and learning activities

1. Starter activity What's Heritage anyway? Teacher background.
This is a Think, Pair, Share activity. (Word, 32kb)

Teacher leads a discussion about what this story tells us about people's attitudes and values.

2. Definitions

Share the starter ideas as a class.
Students write their own definitions of heritage on cards.
Display on the class noticeboard under the question "What's Heritage?"
Leave a box of blank cards for students to make alterations as the unit develops.

(Use this board as part of your display during the study. Build up information, opinions, questions evolving definitions, and graphics.)

3. People hunt

Check prior knowledge and build the heritage site concept further with this seek and find activity, People Hunt. (Word, 30kb)

4. Ideas and themes (Heritage sites and why they are important)

Tell the class:
You are picked to be part of a World Heritage Youth Forum and one task is to come up with ideas and themes that can be included in a song highlighting the importance of world heritage. The song may be used as part of a video that promotes the idea of world heritage sites.

As a class, brainstorm the ideas and themes that need to be included in the words of this song. List them on the whiteboard, for example, names of some heritage sites and the need to protect them.

5. Natural or cultural heritage sites?

Teacher preparation: Download the poems "A Shared Heritage" (Word, 28kb) and "The World Heritage" (Word, 28kb)
www.unesco.org/whc/sites

Read the poems with the students. Begin with "The World Heritage" (Word, 28kb). [Give your students a copy of the poems.]
Check each idea in the brainstormed list. Are they part of these poems? Students search and highlight.
Repeat with "A Shared Heritage" (Word, 28kb).
Introduce the concept of natural and cultural properties (Word, 35kb).
Teacher preparation: Print this out and cut into six cards.
Divide your class into six groups and give each group one card, for example, "Monuments" or "Natural Features".
Students look for and circle examples of their property from the poems.

6. What do we know? (What examples of local and national heritage are we aware of?)

In pairs, use the criteria provided to list sites of natural and cultural significance (Word, 37kb) that you know of in your area and in New Zealand.

7. Assess the sites

Write each of the students' heritage site examples on cards. Blue for local cultural sites, green for local natural heritage sites, red for national cultural, and black for national natural heritage sites.
Divide the class into four groups and give each group one set of cards.
Each group assesses each example against the listed criteria.
Display accepted examples on the class noticeboard.
Discuss the validity of each one.

8. View some world heritage sites

Teacher preparation: Browse through the online photo exhibition of sites and decide which ones you will focus on with your students. Pick a selection of natural and cultural heritage sites (Word, 32kb). You could choose from this list.

With students

As each site appears decide if it is a cultural or natural site. Discuss why each was chosen.

9. What were those seven wonders?

Ask the students to list the seven wonders of the world. [Don't worry if their list is very short.]
View the Seven Ancient Wonders. (Word, 32kb)
Discuss the sites. Would they be listed today as natural or cultural sites?

Which ones are still around today? [The Great Pyramid is the only one left.]
What might have happened to the others?

In your four groups list your own seven wonders of the world (Word, 32kb) according to today's criteria for world heritage sites.

10. What started the idea of identifying and valuing world heritage?

With the class read "Rescuing the world's heritage" (Word, 32kb)
Groups of three. Each student is allocated one task.
- Task 1: Identify the issue
- Task 2: Identify the solution
- Task 3: Identify the outcome
Each student has a copy of this organiser (Word, 31kb) (World heritage: Global cooperation at its best) but completes only their own task.

11. In our words: creating a simplified version of the criteria for choosing a world heritage site

Students work in pairs to rewrite each of the criteria from the sheet In Our Words. (Word, 39kb)Share these in class and choose the best one for display on the notice board.

12. Jigsaw flowchart. How does a site become a world heritage site?