Essential English – Learning about deforestation with a focus on palm oil plantations

A lesson designed for use in a 12 Essential English classroom in Queensland, Australia as part of Unit 3: “Language that influences.” During this unit students learned how to create and shape perspectives on community, local and global issues in texts. Their assessment at the end of this unit was to write a 4-6 minute persuasive multimodal (speech) to be delivered live or pre-recorded about an issue of their choice.

A PPT which structures the lesson. It begins with a cool down viewing activity – an emotive video from Green Peace which showcases the impacts on Orangutan’s. This is followed by some underlined notes for student to copy (a definition of palm oil). There are some pictures to aid visual learners. A brief history of the uses of palm oil through time is provided as well as information about the two types of palm oil (crude oil and kernel oil). The links to deforestation are then explained and images of endangered species are provided. Some other causes of deforestation are shown as well as information about air pollution and soil erosion. There are some short videos from Better Homes and Gardens from when Dr Harry visited organisations which assist with Orangutan conservation. There is also a short video from Behind the News (an Aussie kids TV program). Afterwards students need to read an article called “How the world got hooked on palm oil” and identify & label the persuasive language features within it. Afterwards, some information about suggested solutions are provided along with an explanation of why boycotting palm oil is not the answer. This is followed by a writing activity where students must write a body paragraph about the issue. There are some suggestions of what to include on the slide and some sentence starters. There is also a sample answer paragraph that I wrote to go through with students after they share their answers.