MYP Individuals & Societies • Year 10 • Intro activity
Castaway
A survival scenario for learning to read a place as a connected environmental and human system, make evidence-based decisions, and test whether solutions are fair and sustainable.
Systems, resources, interdependence and power
Original AdornGeo sequence
Unit learning
Enter the Castaway scenario and map what is known, unknown and assumed
Inventory island resources, ecosystem services, hazards and immediate needs
Prioritise water, food, shelter, health and security without exhausting the islands
Trace ocean currents to explain why plastic reaches an isolated beach
Design a fair system of roles, rules, ownership and decision-making
Plan a resilient settlement using systems thinking and carrying capacity
Present, test and revise a survival plan when the scenario changes
1. The Castaway Brief
The surviving AdornGeo scenario places a group of NIST students on an isolated two-island archipelago with no communication beyond the islands. Begin with evidence, not solutions: separate what the brief states from assumptions, questions and information the group still needs.
2. Read the Islands as a System
The brief identifies forest, mangroves, birds, reptiles, coral reefs and rich marine life. Classify these as stocks, flows and ecosystem services. Then add limiting factors and feedbacks: harvesting fish changes food supply; clearing forest changes shelter materials, soils, freshwater and biodiversity.
TED-Ed — How do ocean currents work?
FAO — Sustainable fishing in São Tomé and Príncipe
3. Needs, Resources and Carrying Capacity
Move from an emergency 24-hour plan to a one-week and one-month plan. Allocate scarce resources while protecting the ecological base that makes survival possible. Every proposal must state its resource input, waste output, labour requirement, risk and regeneration time.
4. The Plastic Clue: An Island Is Not Isolated
Plastic on the beaches is the scenario's most important geographic clue. Use currents and prevailing winds to infer connections to distant producers and consumers. Distinguish visible beach litter from microplastics, and explain why responsibility is shared across a system rather than confined to the island.
NOAA — Ocean currents
NASA — An ocean in motion
NOAA Ocean Today — the Pacific Garbage Patch
5. Build a Society: Power, Rules and Fairness
Survival is also a social and political problem. Decide who allocates food, who performs dangerous work, how knowledge is shared, what counts as private or common property, and how conflicts are resolved. Make power visible and protect people who could otherwise be excluded.
TED-Ed — How to understand power
How ethics can help us make better decisions
6. Design the Settlement
Create an annotated island plan that connects physical geography to human needs. Locate shelter, freshwater collection, sanitation, food production, protected ecosystems, waste storage, emergency assembly and transport routes. Use a key, scale, north arrow and explicit trade-offs.
7. Stress Test and Reflection
Teams present a survival system, then respond to a new constraint such as drought, injury, population growth, reef decline, conflict or discovery of a useful resource. Revise the plan rather than defending it unchanged, and identify leverage points where one decision improves several parts of the system.