Unit 1: Asian Diversity and Environmental Challenges

Content focus:

In this unit, students explore countries of the Asia-Pacific region and the environmental challenges they face. In doing so, students explore and reflect upon similarities, differences and the importance of intercultural understanding and investigate the environmental challenges faced by selected countries.

Syllabus content area:
Diversity across Asia-Pacific region – Students investigate the diversity in geographical characteristics of countries of the Asia-Pacific region and examine the economic, demographic and social differences between countries of the Asia-Pacific region including employment, population and lifestyle.

Key inquiry questions:

• How do places, people and cultures differ across the world?
• What are some of the environmental challenges faced by people in the Asia?

Geographical concepts:

• Place: the significance of places and what they are like. For example: places students live in and belong to and why they are important.
• Space: the significance of location and spatial distribution, and ways people organise and manage the spaces that we live in. For example: location of a place in relation to other familiar places.
• Environment: the significance of the environment in human life, and the important interrelationships between humans and the environment. For example, how and why places should be looked after.
• Interconnection: no object of geographical study can be viewed in isolation. For example: local and global links people have with places and the special connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples maintain with Country/Place.
• Scale: the way that geographical phenomena and problems can be examined at different spatial levels. For example: various scales by which places can be defined such as local suburbs, towns and large cities.
• Sustainability: the capacity of the environment to continue to support our lives and the lives of other living creatures into the future e.g. extent of environmental change; environmental management practices; sustainability initiatives.
• Change: explaining geographical phenomena by investigating how they have developed over time. For example: changes to environmental and human characteristics of places.

Outcomes:
A student:

• describes the diverse features and characteristics of places and environments
• explains interactions and connections between people, places and environments
• compares and contrasts influences on the management of places and environments
• acquires, processes and communicates geographical information using geographical tools for inquiry.

Inquiry skills:
Acquiring geographical information

• develop geographical questions to investigate and plan an inquiry
• collect and record relevant geographical data and information, using ethical protocols, from primary data and secondary information sources, for example, by observing, by interviewing, conducting surveys, or using maps, visual representations, statistical sources and reports, the media or the internet

Processing geographical information

• evaluate sources for their usefulness
• represent data in different forms, for example plans, graphs, tables, sketches and diagrams
• represent different types of geographical information by constructing maps that conform to cartographic conventions using spatial technologies as appropriate
• interpret geographical data and information, using digital and spatial technologies as appropriate, and identify spatial distributions, patterns and trends, and infer relationships to draw conclusions

Communicating geographically

• present findings and ideas in a range of communication forms as appropriate
• reflect on their learning to propose individual and collective action in response to a contemporary geographical challenge and describe the expected effects of their proposal on different groups of people.

Geographical tools:
Maps

• large-scale maps, small-scale maps, sketch maps, political maps, topographic maps, flowline maps
• maps to identify location, latitude, direction, distance, map references, spatial distributions and patterns

Graphs and statistics

• pictographs, data tables, column graphs, line graphs, climate graphs
• multiple graphs on a geographical theme
• statistics to find patterns

Spatial technologies

• satellite images

Visual representations

• photographs, aerial photographs, illustrations, flow diagrams, annotated diagrams, multimedia, web tools

Lessons and worksheets included in the download file:

Lesson 1: Asia: An introduction :: Resource Sheet 1 :: PowerPoint 1
Lesson 2: Investigating and Asian country :: Student Worksheet 1
Lesson 3: Environmental issue: Plastic pollution in Bali :: Resource Sheet 1
Lesson 4: Environmental issue: Deforestation in Borneo :: Resource Sheet 1
Lesson 5: Environmental issue: Sea level rise, Bangladesh :: Resource Sheet 1 :: PowerPoint 1
Lesson 6: Investigating an environmental issue