Title of Unit Unit 4: Sustainable outdoor relationships

Area of study 1: Health Outdoor environments

Key knowledge bullet point
The importance of healthy outdoor environments for individual physical and emotional
wellbeing, and for the future of society

The content knowledge required to teach to the bullet point.

This section aims at getting students to analyse the importance of health outdoor environments for
individuals and society.
This are needs to be broken down into 2 sections;
1. Importance for individuals
2. Importance for society

Its important to realise that health natural environments may have either a direct or indirect effect
on society and individuals;
- Direct: Food Production
- Indirect: Place for recreation
-
Importance for Individuals:
Health environments are important for individuals as it gives people an opportunity to use the
environment in the following ways;
1. Recreation: A place for people to play ball games, walk the dog or to socialise
2. For inspiration: Allows writers and artists to use the environment as a form of motivation for
creative work. Eg/ Artist, photographer, writer
3. Education: Schools groups would use the environment to gain knowledge about ecosystems
and food chains and webs

Importance for society:

Health environments are important for society in the following ways;

1. Resource: This could be for timber which could be used to build infrastructure or water for
drinking
2. Scientific Research: This is a broad category and can be see in many different ways
a. Development of new medicines and treatments such as Tea Tree oil. Comes from
the Melaleuca plant it is used to help treat skin conditions and used as a hydrating
shampoo and conditioner
b. Conservation research which helps maintain healthy environments and monitors the
increase or decrease of flora and fauna populations
3. Intrinsic Value: The way in which we as society rate our natural environments as to what
they can provide for us individually
Ideas on relevant school based learning activities;

ICT based investigation using your schools intranet you could conduct a survey about how people
interact with outdoor environments; explore the reasons they have for interacting in these ways and
the value that they place on outdoor environments

Have someone from the CSIRO research department talk to your students about recently completed
investigations and how they use the environment to enhance their research

Ideas on links to practical outdoor experiences;

Go into your school yard you can do a research task looking at the number of species in a specified
environment in your school

Head to a local environment and over a period of time and note the people in the park and what
they are using it for. A good example could be Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne.

List of links to other key knowledge bullet points

Unit 3 AOS 2: Relationships. This area looks at peoples changing relationships with the environment
as influenced by commercialisation and primary industry. The effects of these events will also impact
on the importance of healthy natural environments.

Unit 4 AOS 2: Maintaining healthy environments through policy. This is a strong link as it outlines
what government bodies are doing to maintain these environments so our reason highlighted above
are maintained. With any negative impact or removal of natural environments our relationship will
change.

Web-links or further resources.

http://environmentvictoria.org.au/

http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/

http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/