Curriculum+Review+3

This is a review on the [|"No Impact Project"] Lesson plan 1 - Consumption. The No Impact Project uses entertainment, education and group action to engage new people in the quest for ways of living that connect individual happiness with service to community and habitat. Other organizational goals are to promote behavioral change, enable the public to experience their own No Impact Experiment, and engage people who are not already tree-hugging, bicycle-riding, canvas-bag-toting, eco-warriors.

The learning outcomes of this lesson are:
 * Use viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret a video clip that introduces issues related to consumption.
 * Use listening skills and strategies to understand informational text.
 * Discuss the prevalence of advertising and society’s constant push to buy more.
 * Identify strategies for environmentally-responsible consumption.
 * Create an alternative gift registry with ideas for presents that are non-material, secondhand, homemade, service-oriented (such as “fix my bike”), experiential (such as “take me to a concert”), or that come from companies that are socially and environmentally responsible.

I like what the curriculum is trying to teach and think that buying from local second hand stores instead of from big chain first hand stores can make a big environmental impact. I also felt that it had a strong family focus in the lesson and how you can be less materialistic and be happier. I did find it almost ironic how one of the major resources for this lesson was a movie that tried to show students the benefits of getting rid of your TV. I also feel like this curriculum has a strong biased against advertising without explaining how advertising came into existence and why it can beneficial.

The lesson does a great job of helping students understanding of their own health and wellbeing as shaped by an array of both proximate and far-off causes. As well as their understanding of potential for change, and of alternative ways of doing things and organizing society (though familiarity with historical and cross-cultural examples, for instance).