Primary geography

Through the exciting world of Minecraft, students explore issues relating to Rainforests, fair-trade, deforestation and economics. Although developed in the UK, the lesson aligns to the Stage 3 Environments strand of HSIE K-6

These excellent teaching resources focus on a current issue and help students learn Indonesian at the same time.

A good teaching tool for explaining the diversity of languages.

Geografia Cultural

Summary- This video explains how so many languages came to be and why. By the early existence of human there was a such smaller variety of languages. Tribes that spoke one language would often split in search of new recourses. Searching tribe would develop in many new different ways than the original tribe. new foods, land, and other elements created a radically different language than the original. 

Insight- In unit 3 we study language as a big element of out chapter. One key question in chapter 6 was why are languages distributed the way they are. It is obvious from the video that languages are distributed they way they are is because of the breaking up from people which forced people to develop differently thus creating a different language. As this process continues, there become more and more branches of a language family.  

Mapmaker is a simple yet fun educational tool that allows students and teachers to create maps for a range of purposes. This is an effective resource that can assist stage 2 students in consolidating their understanding of the cardinal directions North, South East and West, which is a key feature of outcome ENS2.5 of the HSIE K-6 Syllabus.  A compass rose is visible on the map template so students can use this to navigate.

The following is an activity that uses Mapmaker in a stage 2 classroom to consolidate students understanding of cardinal directions.

Activity

Equipment:

Procedure:

NB: Mapmaker is also available as an interactive whiteboard program that can be an excellent way for the teacher to model to the students the activity.

Reference List:

Board of Studies. (2006). Human Society and Its Environment K-6 Syllabus. NSW: Board of Studies.

Comparison of countries allows students to see different perspectives and lifestyles of children and families all around the world. 

Course resource

helps show the different perspectives of our world and how it has changed. also shows many different forms of mapping our world throughout time.

UNIT 1 

This article discusses map projections and how they shape our perception of the world. Maps influence how we see the world, and could change the way we see it as well. These projections show us many different views of the Earth, which is very influential to our perspectives. This applies to unit 1 and its major concepts and underlying geographical perspective such as analyzing maps. 

Global participation, interdependence, cultural diversity and globalisation are all key ideas in the HSIE K-6 Syllabus. Students learning the appropriate skills and terminology to navigate the globe and map is of critical importance to these key ideas and lay an important foundation for Stage 3 and Stage 4 outcomes that expand on this global perspective. Globes and maps assist in connecting students with their own community and importantly with the rest of the world.

This is a comprehensive yet concise blog post explaining the relevant geographical terminology that students should be learning throughout the Primary School years, with particular focus on terminology relating to maps. This blog post covers topics including the equator, the Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer and cardinal directions. This geographical terminology is directly linked to the Stage 2 outcome ENS2.5 in the HSIE K-6 Syllabus. As part of this outcome students are required to learn this geographical terminology.

This post is an extremely useful and practical tool for teachers to understand key geographical terminology but it also provides various visual images that would be beneficial to utilise in the classroom. For example, the blog post has included a rotating 3D globe, an image of a compass rose and images of a variety of different map projections.

Reference List:

Board of Studies. (2006). Human Society and Its Environment K-6 Syllabus. NSW: Board of Studies.

World Vision Australia has a range of school resources linked to its magazine 'Get Connected'. The resources related to migration and asylum seekers are notable for their global perspective.

The migration lesson plan is a series of six lessons designed to accompany the issue of 'Get Connected' focusing on migration. The lesson plan covers the following aspects of migration:

- Australia’s immigration story

- Push and pull factors

- Types of migration

- Asylum seekers and refugees

- The migrant experience

- The role of government and NGOs.

The magazine itself  includes a number of personal narratives in the form of written case studies, and the lesson plan links to digital migration stories, part of acmi’s digital storytelling project: http://generator.acmi.net.au/education-themes

MODIFICATION

The migration lesson plan does not specify a target stage or age group, and seem to be geared towards upper primary and lower secondary students.

This means that some of the content and activities would need to be modified for Stage 2 students. This could be done by:

- limiting the amount of independent research that students are expected to complete for activities

- supplying the information instead, either as printouts or links to websites.

Lesson 6, ‘the role of government and NGOs’, may be more suitable for Stage 3 students, who look at ‘structures, roles, responsibilities and decision-making processes of State and federal governments’ (SSS3.8)

However, many of the activities in the lesson plan are already suitable for Stage 2 students. These include:

- creating a class graph or chart showing the regions that families come from

- making a poster of push-pull factors

- examining and interpreting maps.

RESOURCES

Although the lesson plan is free to download, the magazine itself is not available to download. It can be ordered from World Vision for $9.90 per copy.

http://www.worldvision.com.au/Libraries/School_Resources/Get_Connected_Order_Form_2012.pdf

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS 

Asylum seekers fact sheet

http://www.worldvision.com.au/Libraries/School_Resources/Asylum_seekers.pdf

The refugee journey

http://www.worldvision.com.au/Libraries/School_Resources/The_refugee_journey.pdf

LINKS TO OTHER SYLLABUS OUTCOMES

Stage 2 teachers could consider using texts with personal narratives to link this global perspective on migration to the English syllabus. Suggested texts include:

The Little Refugee, by Anh Do and Suzanne Do, illustrated by Bruce Whatley

- Anh Do's story about his family's escape from war-torn Vietnam and his childhood in Australia, told especially for children

http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=94&book=9781742378329

http://www.allenandunwin.com/_uploads/BookPdf/TeachersNotes/9781742378329.pdf

Harmony and understanding

http://www.blake.com.au/Harmony-and-Understanding-s/773.htm

A nonfiction series that fosters understanding, inclusion, tolerance and respect for the multicultural experience. Created in partnership with the Australian Multicultural Foundation

World Vision Australia and the Primary English Teaching Association Australia have also developed a unit of work called ‘Global people’

http://www.globalwords.edu.au/units/Refugees_UPY6_html/documents/GlobalWords_Refugees_UPY6print.pdf

The ‘Global people’ unit of work is based on the following texts:

‘Ziba Came on a Boat’, by Liz Lofthouse, illustrated by Robert Ingpen

‘Mahtab’s Story, by Libby Gleeson

‘Parvana’, by Deborah Ellis

‘Boy Overboard’, by Morris Gleitzman

This video is a great tool to introduce outcome CUS2.4-Describes different viewpoints, ways of living, languages and belief systems in a variety of communities, focusing on; languages spoken within communities, including the original Aboriginal language spoken in the local community area. This video is a great way to provide the students with an understanding of the vast cultural differences within our world and different communities. Although focusing on a global level is approached in stage 3, I feel that this video does a fantastic job at scaling down the statistics to a small community, which is what we are focusing on in stage 2.

When using this video as a resource, it would be a great idea to play it to the students and engage them in a guided discussion, asking appropriate questions;    

Were there any statistics that shocked you?  Did you think that the 8 languages they addressed would be the most common?

Once the students have an understanding of the amount of languages used and have addressed any questions the students have asked, the students can then locate, record, organize and classify language statics in our local community through the CENCUS website. In pairs the students can then find out how many languages there are in their community then scale them to most common to least. Once the class is aware of the diversity of languages in their community, the students can continue working in pair and answer some questions about the different languages to report back and share their findings with the the class e.g. How many Chinese people are there in our community? How many Chinese people speak Cantonese? How many Chinese people speak mandarin?

How many people speak 2 languages?

This resource and activity would be great to use worldwide to make comparisons of the different languages used in different countries. It would be also fantastic to use in rural Australia where the primary language spoken is English, the students could get language statistics of different communities and compare it to their own.