Spaceship Earth

Summary

This lesson looks at the differences between developed and developing nations, paying special attention to the unequal standards of living. As a listening exercise, read the spaceship story to the class. Students listen to the story and draw a picture based on what they hear. After the story is complete and students have guessed how much longer the spaceship has left, tell the students this story represents the earth. Class and group discussion help students to understand the meaning of the story and to think about real-life problems in Japan and the rest of the world.

Background Information

Japan is a wealthy developed country with a population that is mainly middle-class. In Asia, Japan is surrounded by many poorer countries where many of the people live below the poverty line (over half of the world’s poor live in Asia). Japan is known for being a high consumer-culture, i.e. the Japanese like to buy many things. Often Japanese students (and adults) don’t think about the impact their "use and toss" habits have on the rest of the world, especially those less fortunate than them. Students need to become aware of how their actions affect others. They should ask themselves: where do their toys and games come from? Who likely made the toys? How much were they paid? Do all children have as much as they do?, etc.

Level: **

Materials

scrap Paper, magazine cuttings.

Procedure

1. Go over some key vocabulary:
   • spaceship - uchuusen
   • energy - enerugi
   • heating - danboo
   • temperature - ondo
   • machines - kikai.
2. Hand out reused sheets of B5 paper. Tell students you are going to tell them a story about a spaceship, and you want them to draw a picture according to what they hear. Repeat the instructions two or three times until all the students are ready to move on. Remind students this is a listening exercise, not an art lesson, and to keep their drawings simple.
3. Begin telling the story (see box below) very slowly without mentioning that this situation represents the Earth. Use some gestures and actions to help the students understand what you are saying.

3^rd year student, Kajiki JHS, Kagoshima-ken

The Spaceship Story

(Draw idea 1 & idea 2 on the blackboard for students to get the basic idea).

1. There is a BIG spaceship in space (i.e. use the whole sheet of paper).
2. The spaceship has two sides: Side A and Side B. Don’t need to draw, only listen: Side A and Side B work separately, but they are two parts to one spaceship. If one side has problems, the other side will also have problems.
3. Two people live on Side A. 20 people live on Side B.
4. Side A has 90% of the food, water and machines. Side B has only 10% of the food, water and machines.
5. The temperature on Side A is always very nice, because Side A can has heating and air conditioning.,
6. Side B is always very very hot. There is no air conditioning because side B does not have enough energy.
7. In the centre of spaceship, there is a computer that everyone can play with. No one is in charge (there is no leader) on the spaceship.
8. Side A and B are very dirty and smoky. There is a lot of garbage.
9. Both sides have guns and bombs, because they are afraid of war with the other side or with each other.
10. Many people living on Side B really want to go to Side A, but they don’t have any money.
11. Some people on Side B are becoming richer. They have more food and clean water, and buy more TVs, videos, cameras and cars. But everyone on Side B can’t live like this, because Side A still has 90% of everything on the spaceship.
12. *** End of drawing***

Meanwhile, the spaceship is getting hotter and hotter. If the spaceship gets too hot, the whole thing might blow up (explode - BANG!)

Discussion

As you finish reading the story, ask the students how much longer the spaceship has before it will blow up. Write down some of their guesses on the blackboard. Now tell them that their spaceship drawing is actually a symbol for the Earth. They have just predicted the time the Earth has left to exist. Go over how much time they guessed, for example: ato ni jikan (two more hours). They will be very shocked.

On the blackboard, write out the following equations and ask three students to come to the front and fill them in:

Side A (=, not =) Side B

Side B (+, -) Side A (+ better than, - worse than)

Side A (+, -) Side B

Then ask all students to raise their hands if they want to live on Side A or Side B.

Ask: What countries are in Side A? Developed countries like, Japan, America, Canada, England, Australia, France, etc. What countries are in Side B? Developing countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.

Explain to students that our Earth is like a spaceship. Even if we live in different countries, we are all part of the same world. When people in one country or group of countries try to have as many material goods as possible (cars, big homes, TVs, computers, etc.), there isn’t enough for people in other countries. We don’t always think about how lucky we are living in countries like Japan. But we also need to think about the people and children living in unlucky places. We can help them by trying to live with fewer things and not buying so much all the time. You may also want to discuss resources and note how many of the resources (lumber, minerals, etc.) we rely on come from Third World countries.

Group Work

Students move into small groups. Ask each group to identify the most serious world problem in their spaceship drawing (i.e. garbage, overpopulation, pollution, global warming, guns, hunger, etc.) and why. Then, ask them to think about the most serious problem in Japan.

Variation

To avoid the language barrier, students could also make a simple drawing of each problem they write down (or if they are very genki, they could act it out in a mime!). Have your JTE help to make sure that you and the students understand each other. Talk about some of the problems together as a class and what we can do to solve them.

Extensions

After doing the spaceship activity, show a video that portrays these global problems. You could also cut out pictures from magazines like National Geographic or take out books from your school library depicting world problems and ask groups to discuss them.

Acknowledgements

This lesson was contributed by Samantha Berman, Kagoshima-ken ALT.