Social and Environmental Issues – Fast Fashion [Essential English]

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.

This PowerPoint introduced students to the unit and what the term ‘social issue’ means. Students had to brainstorm some issues and then these were sorted into local, national and international categories.

Information was provided about the United Nations as the task for this year was that students would be delivering their speech at a UN youth conference in Brisbane.

Following this, students were introduced to their first issue for the term: fast fashion. There was a viewing activity from the ABC. There were underlined notes for students to copy. Information was provided about how to spot a fast fashion brand. Some things to watch out for when purchasing clothes were also provided. There was an opinion piece (text) about fast fashion for students to read and take note of the language features used to position the reader.

Finally, some information about fast fashion’s impact on the planet (pollution, water consumption, synthetic microfibres, carbon emissions) is included (via infographics, images and research from websites).