Resources to consider

 My Place storybook:  a great resource to teach about the importance of place to people.

This posting is just a random selection of resources that you may be interested in to explore as you try to develop engaging and creative teaching activities.

Internet resources 

* Australian history mysteries

* Australian War Memorial

* Classroom photographs over time - and many more photos

* Kidsgeo games  The Oceana game

* Bound for South Australia

* This day in history and history orb

* Instagram as a teaching tool

* My Place in History

* Ollie’s World

* Geography Associations ‘Planet Sport

* My place in history

* Voice thread

* YouTube clips - ‘Guess that Gadget’ series

* Rouse Hill House – Historic Houses Trust NSW

* National Museum Australia

* Google Earth

* Migration Museum of SA

* Whyalla Maritime Museum

* Australian folksongs

* Language map

* How well do you know your world?


Non-Internet resources

* The Aboriginal flag.

* 'Letters from Felix': Annette Langdan.

Book resources

* "Are we there yet? "by Alison Lester and a YouTube to accompany the reading of the children's picture book , 'Are we there yet?' by Alison Lester (2004). Powerpoint on this by resource  is available if you click her 

* My "Story book" collection

* If the World were a Village by David Smith


*** You may also be interested in the corresponding blog from the 2012 class - some more great resources.***

*** The "Fun is OK" posting has plenty more great resources listed (and linked to). ***

The power of story telling

In her excellent article on storybooks in geography called Reading the world, Anne Dolan says:

"While the value of picture story books in language and literacy is widely accepted, picture story books also provide a powerful medium in the teaching of geography. They demonstrate meaningful concepts and represent the world a child is coming to know."

In this posting I have listed and linked to a range of such books and resources that may provide teaching materials for primary school teachers wanting to 'do geography' a little differently with a literacy bent. Whilst on about using literature for teaching geography I must again refer to the excellent Global Words resource from the Primary English Teachers Association Australia (PETAA) - developed in collaboration with World Vision. 

The 'Geography through Storybooks' resource

The following sites are useful to start searching for a picture story book/s to teach geography, whether about place, space, change, sustainability, interconnection, environment or scale.

* Our Geography Through Story resources: Storybook collection 

* A bibliography of storybooks for geography

* Books for junior geography

* Popular geography children's book 

* Children's books for the geography buff

* Geography storybooks from other cultures

* Storybooks on Pinterest

* Here also is a list of books (with links to purchasing details) suggested for the primary years of the Australian Curriculum: Geography (compiled by Sue Mann from the DECD Torrens Partnership)

Foundation
Stella's star liner
Clementine's walk
Henry's map
Looking down
My place in space

Year 1
The great expedition
ABC book of seasons
Ernie dances to the Dideridoo

Year 2
Lately Lily- Adventures of a traveling girl
Ruffy and me
Remembering Lionsville

Year 3
Memorial Gary crew

Year 4
Here is the African Savannah
Up and down the Andes
We're roaming in the rainforest
Where the forest meets the sea

Year 5
Fire - Jackie French
Belonging

Year 6
If the world were a village
Where children sleep

Year 7
Window on a changing World
One well (Citizen Kid Series)
A cool drink of water
Paddock
My Place
Dr Seuss - where will you go? 

Thinking about the reasons why

Related sites to Humsteach blog
Australian Curriculum Portal
DECD Learning Resources for Australian Curriculum
GeogSpace
History AC Units

Let's talk theory for a while
As mentioned this week, it is important  in your rationale sections for your unit plan to refer to learning theories and HaSS Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) behind the activities and assessment that you design. Your text book by Gilbert Hoepper provides plenty of HaSS PCK specific references to consider. To help you in the task beyond the text book have a look at a site that provides useful information about learning theories at http://www.learning-theories.com

To give you some guidance with the referencing consider the following:

Theories behind the AC Inquiry model 
In the Australian Curriculum you will see many learning theories in action via the inquiry model used in HaSS

Constructivism
Fundamental to the designing of your unit is the concept of contructivism. Constructivism is the learning design approach that proposes learners need to build their own understanding of new ideas.


 Blooms taxonomy
An important underpinning basis for the progression of learing and inquiry is Blooms taxomomy .

Some other learning theories to refer to when deveoping your planning rationales are ( I will leave it up to you to check out these):

·       Multiple Intelligences

·       Systems thinking

·       Experiential learning

  Backward design  - particular relevant to the designing of assessment planning.