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STAGE 3 (YEARS 5&6): TOPIC 2: A DIVERSE AND CONNECTED WORLD

Content focus:

Students explore countries of the Asia region and the connections Australia has with other countries across the world. Students learn about the diversity of the world’s people, including the indigenous peoples of other countries. Students will explore and reflect upon similarities, differences and the importance of intercultural understanding.

Content:

Diversity across Asia

The world’s cultural diversity 
Students investigate the world’s cultural diversity, including the cultures of indigenous peoples

Global connections
Students investigate connections between Australia and other countries of the world>

Connections shape perceptions
Students investigate how connections influence people’s perceptions and understanding of places

Key inquiry questions:

  • How do places, people and cultures differ across the world?
  • What are Australia’s global connections?
  • How do people’s connections to places affect their perception of them?

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. For example: ways in which people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, use and protect natural resources; differing views about environmental sustainability; sustainable management of waste.
  • 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
  • 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 ethicalprotocols, from primary data and secondaryinformation 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 spatialtechnologies as appropriate
  • interpret geographical data and information, using digital and spatialtechnologies 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

Fieldwork

  • observing, measuring, collecting and recording data, conducting surveys or interviews
  • fieldwork instruments such as measuring devices, maps, photographs, compasses, GPS

Graphs and statistics

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

Spatial technologies

  • virtual maps, satellite images, GPS

Visual representations

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