Explore United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Targets that pinpoint inquiry and potential community action 

Purpose:
Guided by the UN SDGs and Targets, students can better understand how to take relevant action in tandem with others: governments, businesses, civil society and the general public to work together to build a better future for everyone.

globalgoals.org

Student Impact Profile:
Critically examine community needs to design ethical solutions

Enduring Understandings:

  • I can use the United Nations Sustainable Develop Goals (SDGs) and Targets to help me inquire about global challenges that exist and are manifested in local community issues.

  • I can take actions to be involved in a collective effort to build a more sustainable, safer, more prosperous planet for all humanity.

Essential Questions:

  1. Argue: Which of the UN SDGs do you believe are the most critical to act upon immediately?

  2. Justify: What UN SDGs and Targets might best connect to personal interests and to local community issues? Why?

  3. Explain: What might be some ideas for local actions that could be carried out in your community to make progress toward the UN SDG Targets that you have identified?

Core activities:

  1. Pre-assess student understanding of the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals. Introduce or reintroduce the UN SDGs (see The World’s Largest Lesson Video).

  2. Facilitate a balloon debate in small groups regarding student initial opinions on ranking the importance of the different SDGs

  3. Use an activity like the Shape of Change to illuminate the interdependence of the UN SDGs as a whole, dynamic system.

  4. Show the video of Lucy and Abbie demonstrating how to think deeply when identifying target cards for further inquiry

  5. Allow students to sort and read target cards (total number adapted based on age appropriateness)

  6. Identify and collect challenging vocabulary related to global challenges

  7. Choose three to five targets which can be linked to personal interest or local community issues

  8. Develop inquiry questions that could potentially spark an Empathy to Impact project cycle, leading towards sustainable community action

  9. Collect the inquiry questions in an idea bank or wall

Flexible Steps:

Apply these ideas for context while scaffolding and differentiating for age, language proficiency, readiness, independence, learning needs, content connections, and so on.

Because of the challenging vocabulary, differentiate for your context by using the SDGs and Targets in multiple languages, by selecting more age-appropriate targets, breaking down the targets into understandable vocabulary, or researching the words in advance or pre-teaching.