Author: Dr Claire

This Week in HASS – term 1, week 3

This is a global week in HASS for primary students. Our youngest students are marking countries around the world where they have family members, slightly older students are examining the Mayan calendar, while older students get nearer to Australia, examining how people reached Australia and encountered its unique wildlife.

Foundation to Year 3

Mayan date

Foundation students doing the Me and My Global Family unit (F.1) are working with the world map this week, marking countries where they have family members with coloured sticky dots. Those doing the My Global Family unit (F.6), and students in Years 1 to 3 (Units 1.1; 2.1 and 3.1), are examining the Mayan calendar this week. The Mayan calendar is a good example of an alternative type of calendar, because it is made up of different parts, some of which do not track the seasons, and is cyclical, based on nested circles. The students learn about the 2 main calendars used by the Mayans – a secular and a celebratory sacred calendar, as well as how the Mayans divided time into circles running at different scales – from the day to the millennium and beyond. And no, in case anyone is still wondering – they did not predict the end of the world in 2012, merely the end of one particular long-range cycle, and hence, the beginning of a new one…

Years 3 to 6

Lake Mungo, where people lived at least 40,000 years ago.

Students doing the Exploring Climates unit (3.6), and those in Years 4 to 6 (Units 4.1, 5.1 and 6.1), are examining how people reached Australia during the Ice Age, and what Australia was like when they arrived. People had to cross at least 90 km of open sea to reach Australia, even during the height of the Ice Age, and this sea gap led to the relative isolation of animals in Australia from others in Asia. This phenomenon was first recorded by Alfred Wallace, who drew a line on a map marking the change in fauna. This line became known as the Wallace line, as a result. Students will also examine the archaeological evidence, and sites of the first people in Australia, ancestors of Aboriginal people. The range of sites across Australia, with increasingly early dates, amply demonstrate the depth of antiquity of Aboriginal knowledge and experience in Australia.

This Week in HASS: term 1 week 2

OpenSTEM A0 world map: Country Outlines and Ice Age CoastlineFoundation to Year 3

Our standalone Foundation (Prep/Kindy etc) students are introduced to the World Map this week, as they start putting stickers on it, showing where in the world they and their families come from – the origin of the title of this unit (Me and My Global Family). This helps students to feel connected with each other and to start to understand both the notion of the ‘global family’, as well as the idea that places can be represented by pictures (maps). Of course, we don’t expect most 5 year olds to understand the world map, but the sooner they start working with it, the deeper the familiarity and understanding later on.

Year 1-3 Building Stonehenge Activity - OpenSTEM History/Geography program for Primary Schools
Students building Stonehenge with blocks

All the other younger students are learning about movements of celestial bodies (the Earth and Moon, as they go around the Sun and each other) and that people have measured time in the past with reference to both the Sun and the Moon – Solar and Lunar calendars. To make these ideas more concrete, students study ancient calendars, such as Stonehenge, Newgrange and Abu Simbel, and take part in an activity building a model of Stonehenge from boxes or blocks.

Years 3 to 6

Demon Duck of Doom

Our older primary students are going back into the Ice Age (and who wouldn’t want to, in this weather!), as they explore the routes of modern humans leaving Africa, as part of understanding how people reached Australia. Aboriginal people arrived in Australia as part of the waves of modern humans spreading across the world. However, the Australia they encountered was very different from today. It was cold, dry and very dusty, inhabited by giant Ice Age animals (the Demon Duck of Doom is always a hot favourite with the students!) and overall, a pretty dangerous place. We challenge students to imagine life in those times, and thereby start to understand the basis for some of the Dreamtime stories, as well as the long and intricate relationship between Aboriginal people and the Australian environment.

This Week in HASS: term 1 week 1

We thought it would be fun to track what’s happening in schools using our primary HASS program, on a weekly basis. Now we know that some of you are doing different units and some will start in different weeks, depending on what state you’re in, what term dates you have etc, but we will run these posts based off those schools which are implementing the units in numerical order and starting in the week beginning 30 January, 2017.

Week 1 is an introductory week for all units, and usually sets some foundations for the rest of the unit.

Foundation to Year 3

Our youngest students are still finding their feet in the new big world of school! We have 2 units for Term 1, depending on whether the class is standalone, or integrating with some Year 1 students. This week standalone classes will be starting a discussion about their families – geared towards making our newest students feel welcome and comfortable at school.

Those integrating with Year 1 or possibly Year 2, as well, will start working with their teachers on a Class Calendar, marking terms and holidays, as well as celebrations such as birthdays and public holidays. This helps younger students start to map out the coming year, as well as provide a platform for discussions about how they spent the holidays. Year 2 and 3 students may choose to focus more on discussing which season we are in now, and what the weather’s like at the moment (I’m sure most of you are in agreement that it’s too hot!). Students can track the weather on the calendar as well.

Years 3 to 6

Some Year 3 students may be in classes integrating with Year 4 students, rather than Year 2. Standalone Year 3 classes have a choice of doing either unit. These older students will be undertaking the Timeline Activity and getting a physical sense of history and spans of time. Students love an excuse to get outdoors, even when it’s hot, and this activity gives them a preview of material they will be covering later in the year, as well as giving them a hands-on understanding of how time has passed and how where we are compares to past events. This activity can even reinforce the concept of a number line from Maths, in a very kinaesthetic way.

Getting to know Homo erectus

Homo erectus, Museum of Natural History, Ann Arbor, Michigan (photo: Thomas Roche)

Homo erectus was an ancient human ancestor that lived between 2 million and 100,000 to 50,000 years ago. It had a larger body and bigger brain than most earlier human ancestors. Although recent debates revolve around how we classify these fossils, and whether they should be broken down into lots of smaller sub-groups, it is generally agreed that Australopithecines in Africa pre-dated the advent of the Homo lineage. Predecessors to Homo erectus, include Homo habilis (“handy man”), a much smaller specimen.

Compared with modern Homo sapiens, which have only been around for the last 200,000 years, Homo erectus, or “upright man,” was very “successful” in a biological sense and lived on the Earth for 10 – 20 times longer than modern humans have been around.

Fossils of H. erectus show that it was the first human ancestor to live outside of Africa – one of the first fossils found was unearthed in the 19th century in Indonesia – others have been found across Asia, including China, as well as Europe and Africa.

A recent interesting summary of information about Homo erectus can be read at http://www.livescience.com/41048-facts-about-homo-erectus.html. OpenSTEM also has a PDF resource on Homo erectus (part of our Archaeology Textbook for Senior Secondary).

Get Hands-On!


If you’re in the greater Brisbane area and would like to have your students touch, compare and otherwise explore human ancestor skulls – talk to us! OpenSTEM has a growing range of 3D printed fossil skulls and our resident archaeologist Dr Claire is available for workshops at primary and high school level (such as Introduction to Archaeology and Fossils).

New Viking Site in North America

Vikings - painting by E.C.RasmussenThe Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America, more than 1000 years ago. The Vikings established settlements and traded with indigenous people in North America for about 400 years, finally abandoning the continent less than 100 years before Columbus’ voyage.

The story of the Vikings’ exploits in North America provides not only additional context to the history of human exploration, but also matches ideally to the study of the Geography of North America, as the names used by the Vikings for areas in North America provide a perfect match to the biomes in these regions.

Long consigned to the realms of myth within Norse sagas, the first archaeological evidence of the truth of the old stories of “Vinland” (Newfoundland) was uncovered by a Norwegian archaeologist in 1960. In recent years archaeologists have uncovered yet more evidence of Viking settlements in North America. OpenSTEM is delighted to share this story of how satellite technology is assisting this process, as we publish our own resource on the Vikings in North America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/01/science/vikings-archaeology-north-america-newfoundland.html

The site was identified last summer after satellite images showed possible man-made shapes under discoloured vegetation on the Newfoundland coast.

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To celebrate the quirkiness of the leap day, we’re doing a very special offer – just from 29 Feb 2016 until 1 Mar 2016!

Leap years are funny things. Did you know, for instance, that in
Ireland and the United Kingdom when it was expected that men would always ask women to marry them and not the other way around, there was a tradition that it was acceptable for
women to ask men to marry them on Leap Year’s Day?

PostcardLeapYearBeCarefulClara1908An OpenSTEM subscription provides free access to all our base PDF Resources for an entire year! This is many megabytes of awesome materials for you to use, full of colourful text and images. New PDFs are added all the time.

To make use of this limited offer, simply go to the special Leap Day page, or use the LEAPDAY coupon code when checking out one of the aforementioned subscriptions in the store. You will need to specifically add either the Private Family or One Teacher subscription to your cart.

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