Lesson Plan

2. Explore Life Cycle Assessments

KS4-17-02

Learning Outcomes

Describe what's meant by a lifecycle assessment, the life cycle assessments for a plastic shopping bag and a paper shopping bag and the problems with life cycle assessments

Higher: Can describe what's meant by a lifecycle assessment, the life cycle assessments for a plastic shopping bag and a paper shopping bag and the problems with life cycle assessments
Middle:
Lower:

Activities

Mission Starter - Engage

Method:

Lesson Starter: What do you think is meant by the term life-cycle assessment? How might the life-cycle assessment be applied to Thames Water?

Resources:

Lesson Starter Slide

The Story - Explore and Explain

Method:

Answer questions and take part in activities during the presentation. Stop the presentation at the relevant slides: Talk Partners; AfLs; Songs. Take part in the Choral Response Questions activity (see Assessment section) after the Keywords/Rocket Words slide.

Resources:

Presentation Sticky notes

Mission Expert - Explain

Method:

A Thames Water experts answers the questions:

How do Thames Water use Life Cycle Assessments? 

What impact do plastic bags have on Thames Water systems?

Resources:

Expert Film

Mission Assignment - Elaborate

Method:

Complete the 2 examination practice questions on the handout provided:

1. A company stated: 'A Life-Cycle Assessment shows that using plastic bags has less environmental impact than using paper bags’. Evaluate this statement. 

2. Use the information in the table and your knowledge to give one advantage and one disadvantage for each of the methods used to deal with plastic bags in the table above.

Resources:

Handout provided

Mission Log - Evaluate

Method:

Quiz With their talk partners, the children are to go through the quiz at the end of the presentation and answer the questions. Formative Assessment Forms Students are to complete these forms where present. Assessment Trays Ask the children to place their Handouts, notebooks, Formative Assessment Forms, Investigation Sheets, into either the Discover tray or Explorer tray * Explain that the green tray means that the learner has understood the lesson well, and that the red tray means that the learner needs more time to practise. * use whichever colours of tray you have in stock, or prefer to use for this. Children to take interactive Assessment Quiz to test lesson comprehension.

Resources:

Quiz in presentation Formative assessment forms Assessment trays Interactive quiz

Assessment

Questions to Ask During the Lesson

1. A company stated: 'A Life-Cycle Assessment shows that using plastic bags has less environmental impact than using paper bags’. Evaluate this statement. Use the language set out in the key fact on the previous page, your knowledge and the information from the table.

2. Use the information in the table and your knowledge to give one advantage and one disadvantage for each of the methods used to deal with plastic bags in the table above.

Teacher Mastery

Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) are carried out to assess the environmental impact of products in each of these stages:

  • extracting and processing raw materials
  • manufacturing and packaging
  • use and operation during its lifetime
  • disposal at the end of its useful life, including transport and distribution at each stage.

Use of water, resources, energy sources and production of some wastes can be fairly easily quantified. Allocating numerical values to pollutant effects is less straightforward and requires value judgements, so LCA is not a purely objective process.

Selective or abbreviated LCAs can be devised to evaluate a product but these can be misused to reach pre-determined conclusions, eg in support of claims for advertising purposes.

Curriculum Fields

National Curriculum

Life Cycle Assessments - Distinguish between finite and renewable resources given appropriate information. Extract and interpret information about resources from charts, graphs and tables.

Working Scientifically Skills

Presenting reasoned explanations, including relating data to hypotheses