The TrackSAFE Education high school resources are designed to help young people learn how to be safe, active, responsible citizens on and around the rail network. Each unit of work takes a capabilities-based approach to rail safety.
We assume that every student has resources within them that can be used to manage safe outcomes for themselves and others on and around the rail network. The unit of work is designed to be integrated into existing school curriculum programs and provide differentiated materials that:
- identify prior knowledge, skills and/or attitudes;
- help bring in new ideas, relate these ideas and then extend these ideas in ways that make a difference for others; and
- provide feedback on learning through a student self-assessment and an assessment of Learning.
English
Students create visual and multimodal texts to promote rail safety within their local community. Choose suitable activities from 3 differentiated lessons.
Read the teacher notes first for instructions and suggested learning pathways. You can then choose to teach all 3 lessons or select a few which suit your students best.
Students brainstorm all they know about evaluative language and how it is used to express an opinion or point of view using hexagons. They explore modality as a way to indicate the strength of an opinion or position. They practise identifying evaluative language in rail safety related visual or multimodal images, exploring how evaluative language, images and shapes work together to communicate an opinion or point of view in a rail safety text.
They then complete an independent deconstruction of a visual or multimodal rail safety image and describe the different evaluative language features using the Think See Wonder strategy
Using their Think See Wonder maps from Lesson 1, students compare the features of different texts used to promote rail safety. They interpret the evaluative language features used in a text with an effective message about rail safety, their purpose and their effect using a Stations activity. They work in groups to create their own ranking criteria for comparing and ranking texts.
Students write a persuasive text (structured argument) justifying a claim about rail safety needs of young people in your local community. They select an important rail safety issue for an identified group, identify an action that would help keep this group safe, and create an action message using evaluative language that will appeal to the group.
They then develop a media campaign which builds awareness of their message, attempts to influence people, persuades people to take action, and/or reduces the incidence of unsafe behaviours around trains, tracks and level crossings.
Health and Physical Education
Students create innovative ways to help manage peer pressure and bullying and promote health, safety and wellbeing on the rail network. Choose suitable activities from 3 differentiated lessons.
Read the teacher notes first for instructions and suggested learning pathways. You can then choose to teach all 3 lessons or select a few which suit your students best.
Students investigate the physical features of a rail network and annotate digital images with descriptions of assets and their potential hazards to create a visual glossary of terms. They watch a video on crowd movement and observe pedestrians in the school grounds walking in crowded and uncrowded conditions.
They discuss the way young people move in groups on the rail network, identifying hazards for themselves and for other pedestrians. They organise a ‘safety walk’, inviting members of a group they identified as being at risk to join them, and complete a hazard checklist on the safety walk. They create a blog post, multimedia presentation or infographic to report on these hazards to the identified target audience
Students investigate hazards for young people on the rail network, ranking them by importance then developing strategies to deal with the top hazard, as voted by the class. They then undertake a think-pair-share activity around emotions (feelings), describing a feeling as if it were a person, and writing a short bio poem or annotated sketch on the feeling. They discuss how each feeling could lead to safe or unsafe behaviours and attitudes on the rail network.
Students identify unsafe behaviours that might be explained by showing off, bullying, peer pressure, or responding to a dare. They then then write a script for a “pick a path” role play offering multiple ways to manage an unsafe behaviour on the rail network caused by peer pressure or bullying. They deliver the role play to the class audience, who can rewind, fast forward or change the way in which the peer pressure is managed.
Alternatively they discuss online and school based bullying and negative peer pressure and develop and compare a list of strategies that can be used to manage bullying online and at school.
The Arts
Students experiment with viewpoints and develop a drama which asks a provocative question about young people and level crossings. Choose suitable activities from 3 differentiated lessons.
Read the teacher notes first for instructions and suggested learning pathways. You can then choose to teach all 3 lessons or select a few which suit your students best.
Students brainstorm everything they know about level crossings using hexagons. They make an operating level crossing using their bodies, roleplaying the passage of a train through the crossing and the level crossing’s response. They alternatively research level crossings and investigate ways people fail to interpret safety messages, role play a pedestrian waiting to use the level crossing, and draw a series of comic cells to describe risky situations.
They experiment with viewpoints, creating a scenario about waiting by themselves and with others and connecting the viewpoints to actions. They develop a storyline which converts negative viewpoints into positive viewpoints, experimenting with voice, body, movement, and use of space techniques to develop their character’s viewpoint. They then present a short role play showing different characters waiting with others at a level crossing, critiquing each other’s performances.
Students develop a compelling narrative about ‘waiting with others’ and use elements from their research to devise a 60 second drama about waiting with others at a level crossing. They do a Freeze Frame activity and use the See Think Wonder technique to further refine their script narrative.
Students develop a metaphor or analogy and/or a symbolic representation to use in their drama about young people and level crossings. They rework their 60-second drama into a longer piece exploring ways for young people to stay safe on and around level crossings.
They experiment with mimed action, soundscape, narration and/or convention to build tension, belief and audience engagement. They consider staging and production techniques, then rehearse and perform their drama to the school community.