Aerial view at sunset of an open pit mine and tailings dam beside a residential town with ovals and homes
Year 7 · Unit 03 · Lesson 03

Building the Criteria

One idea must land: judging without rules collapses into “depends what you count” — criteria, weighted before the evidence, make judgment fair.

The unit’s most confronting image — a mine and a town, side by side at sunset — has been held back until now. It opens a lesson built around a full fictional newspaper feature, The Western Ledger: two towns, one that said yes and one that said no, engineered so neither is right. Students judge it without rules, hit the wall (“depends what you count”), and that wall is the lesson: teams then build the five criteria, weight them with 20 hard points, and draw their values as a radar shape no two teams share.

Spark

The image + the harvest

Thirty silent seconds on the aerial. Then worry / surprise / question captured and shared. Then the Lesson 2 seed collected: every “what should a mine have to prove?” idea goes to the board verbatim — kid language, unsorted. That board becomes the raw material.

Don’t sort yet. The criteria must feel built by them, not delivered to them.
Core

The Western Ledger — judging without rules

The article lands: Marla Creek said yes (300 jobs, four teachers, a changed creek, families leaving); Eddington said no (a glass-clear creek, closing shops, kids moving away). Students mark it as they read — underline the good, box the costs, circle the hardest sentence — then pairs MUST pick a winner in 90 seconds.

The punchline, delivered slowly: “smart people, same facts, opposite answers — you were counting different things. That’s why judges write their rules FIRST.” Sharp kids will spot Marla Creek: Joan’s company from Unit 2, grown up. Reward the noticing.
Workshop

Build, weight, draw

The board gets sorted into piles with the class calling the moves, and the class names the piles — steering gently toward the five: Environment · Economy · Community · Governance · Liveability. Then teams weight: 20 points, no even spreads — at least one 6+, at least one 2-or-less. The argument IS the learning. Scores go onto the pentagon radar; dots joined; shape signed.

The gallery moment: every radar held up, every shape different. “That’s perception, from Lesson 1, drawn in pen.” “Governance” won’t come from them — offer the grown-up word when they invent “promises” or “checking up.”
Land it

Test questions + the gut-lock

One test question per criterion, starting with a question word — a rule you can’t test is just an opinion. Then the exit that Lesson 5 will collect on: the gut-lock — verdict hunch recorded before a single fact exists. YES, NO or DEPENDS. In two lessons: did the rules win, or the gut?

Teacher intel

Would Kylie from the article sign your radar? Would Robbie? (Same facts, different weights.)
Is your test question answerable with evidence — or an opinion wearing a question mark?
Which criterion would an 80-year-old weight differently? (Lesson 1 never left.)
If two criteria clash — big jobs, damaged creek — what does your weighting already tell you to do?
Watch for“More criteria = fairer” (five sharp beats ten mushy) · “our weighting is the RIGHT one” (weights are values made visible; another good team can differ) · “the article has a winner” (it was built not to — that’s the point).
Running shortCut the gallery moment; test questions become the last five minutes. Protect the article argument, the pile-sort naming, the no-even-spreads weighting, and the gut-lock exit.
SupportThe five criterion names as pre-printed sort cards; the article read aloud in full before marking; the at-a-glance recap box sits under the article for exactly this.
ExtendThe heritage question, raised with respect: should the story and meaning of the land — especially for Aboriginal communities — be a sixth criterion, or part of every criterion? A good unresolved question beats a rushed answer.