Lesson plans and activities: Later Adolescence

Business beware! Conducting a responsible business

As part of a unit of work on marketing, students will explore a range of scenarios relating to ethics in business. They will rate the conduct of the businesses using a five-point scale ranging from ‘acceptable’ to ‘unacceptable’. Students will then discuss their decisions with the rest of the class, leading to a discussion of ethics.
Students will then undertake research into the concept of ‘misleading or deceptive and unconscionable conduct’ in business. A key question is whether business managers should follow the letter of the law, or whether there are other principles that apply to their conduct. Students will then reflect on how a business should act when faced with a decision that is legal, but potentially irresponsible.

Later adolescence (16-18 years)

• Honesty
• Integrity
• Responsibility

• Business Studies

Can we use mobiles at school?

Students research the efficacy of using mobile ICT devices (mobile phones, PDAs, iPods, etc) as learning tools with a view to implementing a suitable policy for their use at their school. The discussion is initiated in a Fishbowl activity about the general use of and social implications for mobile devices. Students then form groups and use a Jigsaw activity to gather information about the use of mobile devices in educational settings. They share their information and use it to develop a policy for the acceptable use of these mobile ICT devices in the school and prepare a written submission for presentation to the Principal and school council.

Explicit values focus

Key Learning Areas

• Freedom
• Respect
• Responsibility

• English

The Global Peace Index – A vision for humanity

The three lessons aim to introduce students to the Global Peace Index website, www.visionofhumanity.org,
Students will discover that their personal values need to be enacted in their everyday lives, and that a more peaceful environment can be achieved when there is an ongoing conversation about the congruence between values and actions.
and to use the introductory video within the site as a stimulus to a broader classroom discussion about the values that underpin peaceful behaviour.
Students will examine and map the nine Values for Australian Schooling to the peace indicators identified in the video. Students will produce a School Peace Index for their own school and again map values to this. Finally, students will make suggestions about how their School Peace Index might be applied in their classroom, more broadly across the school, and in their lives outside school.

Later adolescence (16-18 years)

• Care and Compassion
• Doing Your Best
• Fair Go
• Freedom
• Honesty and Trustworthiness
• Integrity
• Respect
• Responsibility
• Understanding, Tolerance and Inclusion

• English and the Ethical Behaviours General Capability
• Studies of Society and Environment
• Civics and Citizenship

Should Australia build nuclear power stations?

As a response to a unit of work on climate change, students research the arguments for and against the generation of electricity by nuclear power in Australia. Initiate the discussion using a values continuum. Students form groups based on their position on the values continuum and research the issue. They share the information and use it to develop a presentation for the government inquiry into the development of nuclear power in Australia.

Year levels

Explicit values focus

Later adolescence (16-18 years)

• Freedom
• Integrity
• Respect
• Responsibility

• Environmental Science/Earth Science

Take off 5 – Is it worth it?

Students discuss the effect of speed on the road toll and individual responsibilities associated with using the roads. They analyse braking distance data obtained from a simulation activity and apply the Equations of Motion and Newton’s Laws to determine stopping distances and the forces involved. They then relate these to road safety issues and design a poster or prepare a storyboard for a video commercial about the effects of speed and braking distances.

Later adolescence (16-18 years)

• Care and Compassion
• Fair Go
• Integrity
• Respect
• Responsibility

• Physics