Economics boom…
Well, we’ve been through our ‘Economic Boom’ and most of the work has been covered. For those of you wishing to improve your assessement, finishing any incomplete tasks and handing them in to your teacher as soon as possible will help.
Most of us are heading to China – not literally, but ‘historically’ – and this unit has already started with the excursion and the Dragon Boat races. This unit is made up of a series of small class activities and there will be less focus on the textbook questions. You may, however, wish to read the textbook chapters to give yourself some background information to go with the activities.
7A & 7B: you will need to ensure you complete the Dynasties timeline as directed in class today – it is due in its final form at our next lesson. I’m looking forward to seeing them all!
Budding Business People
It’s great to see so many great business ideas out there. Remember for the moment, you only have to plan your business – you don’t actually have to run it yet. However, you could use the feedback you get from this project to help you next year as we will be revisiting business practices again.
To those of you who have completed your ticksheets – congratulations and well done! This will give you more time to add greater detail to your business plans. If you want to try some of the worksheets available on the wiki, you can earn bonus points and extend your Economics knowledge.
There are still some students who haven’t signed up to the wiki. You will need to do this as it’s one of your assessment tasks for this unit. If you need help, ask your teacher or seek some peer coaching.
Not long now until we move onto studying Ancient China. If you’d like to get ahead, take a look at the relevant chapters of your textbook and view the documentary through the link on the right.
Working ‘economically’
By now everyone is well into their economics study and it’s great to see so many of you keen to apply your new knowledge to actual practice.
I have loaded up the Business Plan Criteria & Information Sheet and the Answer Sheet Template onto the wiki. You’ll find it in two places: on the Economics page and on the Student Resources page. It doesn’t matter where you get it from, but you must make sure you do read both and then complete the task in the alloted time.
Many of you will have tick-sheets to help you track where you are up to in the unit. If you prefer a different system, the traffic light inventory sheet is available on the wiki. You can use either of them for yourself, but some teachers do prefer to use the ticksheet to track your work for the database.
It is important to be aware of the expected due dates for the work and to ensure you use your class time wisely – if you are efficient with this time you’ll have a much more managable homework load.
If you think about it in economic terms – you have X number of hours to spend on Y number of tasks. If you waste the productive X hours, you’ll need to make up the time from somewhere – perhaps your own leisure time….
Welcome to Term 4
Welcome back for our final term. This term we will be studying the concept of the global citizen in our Term Project Unit, and to support that work, Humanities is taking a focus on globalisation through a study of economics, Ancient and Modern China.
You’ll find all the curriculum information is available on this blog by clicking on the Term Four tab at the top right of this blog page. That page has your starting information and further clickable links to the four parts of the unit.
You’ll also find additional information and all the resources you need to get started on the Year 7 Humanities wiki (called the Term Four wiki on the links on the right). You’ll need to sign in as a wiki user, and then request membership of the wiki. Please, as this is a workspace, use your school email account to sign in. Once you’ve done that you can navigate through the site and begin work on the units of study.
You’ll get more information in classes as to how to do all this, and lessons will run as usual with activities, bookwork and computer time. Please bear in mind that this online curriculum approach is new to us and there may be a few minor hiccups along the way, but we’ll work together to iron any kinks out.
Last week of term…
I’m sure you’re all looking forward to a break and I hope you enjoy yourselves. Before you go you have one last homework task to complete. I handed out a geographer’s language writing task in class and you are to complete that and hand in by Tuesday next week. (That’s Tuesday 15th September)
Next week in class we will be reviewing the work we have covered this term and you will all have to make sure that any incomplete work is finished before the end of term.
Fieldwork: local streetscapes
Last week we took to the local streets to collect specific geographic data. This week you will be collating that data and producing some statistical charts and graphs. This will show you how data works to produce statistics that are used by governments, councils and various organisations. Familiarise yourself with MS Excel – or at the very least have a look at the software and figure out what it might be for, and we’ll work with this during the week.
You should have your Melways mapping exercise completed and if you haven’t already handed it in, I’m looking forward to receiving it on Monday.
Our Local Community
Now that we have some understanding of our local indigenous history, we are going to take a closer look at our local landscape. You have done some work on learning about environments and we will build on that information with practical fieldwork before the end of term.
You should have already completed and handed in the homework on environments (Chapter 7.0 & 7.1). Reading (Chapter 6.3) will help you understand how maps work and you are asked to extend this learning with the homework activity due on Friday 4th Sept.
Indigenous Culture: an introduction to Aboriginal History
Australia’s history has, in the past, been understood as beginning in the 18th Century when European explorers navigated their way around the southern hemisphere’s oceans and ‘discovered’ the Southern continent.
However, as we have learned over recent decades, this colonial history is only one version of the events that have shaped this country.
Histories that claim the start of our history as the date Europeans arrived on shore have been written ignoring the fact that indigenous Australians had been here for up to 60,000 years previously.
Some of the important points we have covered so far:
- Caste is not a valid measure of someone’s cultural heritage. DNA has no ‘culture’ so you can’t be 50% English and 50% Irish, for example. Culture or heritage is about how an individual identifies themselves according to how they live.
- Culture is not static – it changes over time and through interactions with other cultures. The things that happened in Aboriginal Australia 60,000 years ago will not necessarily be the same things that happen today. Just as ‘European’ or Australian culture is not static and has changed over the years, so too indigenous cultures have changed over time.
- 250 nations existed in this country before the First Fleet landed – that’s five times more than in Europe.
A question to ponder: if the Aboriginal nations map had been drawn as it is now when Captain Cook arrived, what might have happened to the nation of Australia?
Traffic Light Inventory 4 August, 2009
7A & 7B For those who were absent yesterday, we did a traffic light inventory of all the work tasks that should have been completed by now. Below is the list of activities you should have finished, either in class or as homework.
Copy the list into your workbook, mark the items ‘green’ for completed, ‘yellow’ for started but not finished, and ‘red’ for not started. You need to ensure that all your lights are ‘green’ to be checked off for assessment. If you have not turned all your lights to ‘green’, then you need to get your head down and finish everything.
Due date for completion of this is this Friday, 7th August. Please hand your workbooks in for marking as soon as you have finished.
Task list:
Freehand map of Australia
ICT: 3 websites on Aboriginal Australia using Department of Education website
Questions on p167 Rainforests
Uluru grid: upscale x2
12 Apostles grid: upscale x2
Overlay: states of Australia and waterways
Burke & Wills: 2 facts
Questions on p 172 in the blue box (includes a worksheet)
Questions on p 173 Remember & Understand
Questions on p173 Apply to end of page
Contours activity p185
Sign up to the wiki
Please ensure you put titles, dates and page numbers of textbook work on each page of your workbook.
Check the wiki as this list is there too, as is the worksheet you need to complete the questions from p172.
Humanities@CCSC
7A & 7B
This week we began by reviewing all the work we have done so far this term. We set up another traffic light inventory to find out just where everyone is up to. It is apparent that a significant number of people have been unable to complete the in-class and homework tasks. So, following on from our in-class catch-up session, this week’s homework task is for each person to ensure they turn all their ‘red’ and ‘yellow’ lights to ‘green’. That is, all incomplete tasks are to be completed by the end of this week. In order to give you a fair chance to achieve this goal, I will not set any additional homework tasks for this week. Your extended due date for this work is Friday 7 August. Please submit your workbooks for assessment when you have completed the tasks.
