Librarians are stepping into the breach to help students become smarter evaluators of the information that floods into their lives. That’s increasingly necessary in an era in which fake news is a constant.
Read more: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/librarians-take-up-arms-against-fake-news
Foundation to Year 3Our 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
It’s most enjoyable being part of a growing company that’s helping to make a real difference for students and our future generation.
For our physical resources, we purposely don’t keep large stock as that would make things prohibitively expensive. The trade-off is that we can’t always do instant shipments. Typically, we do order in new items when we’re running low. It’s not an entirely straightforward process, since we have to assemble kits such as the Ginger Beer Classroom Kit and the Soldering Kit ourselves, by necessity from different sources.
When a product sees a particular spike in interest, we sometimes briefly run out. Actually that’s quite normal and it happens even with companies that keep lots of stock. When out-of-stock, we can generally fulfil the order within 1-2 weeks. A brief delay, but with the advantage that you get what you want, at a reasonable price, from a trusted Australian supplier with friendly service. We believe that these aspects adequately compensate for the lack of “instant gratification”…
So where are we at right now with our physical resources stock? A brief overview:
If you have any questions about any of our products, please don’t hesitate to ask! Contact us.
At the start of 2016, Seville Road State School replaced their existing History and Geography units with the integrated Understanding Our World HASS + Science materials developed by OpenSTEM. As this school year draws to a close, we’d like to invite you to come and celebrate the marvellous outcomes that the students and teachers have achieved: Thursday 24 November 2016, 3:30pm.
This is your perfect opportunity to look at the materials and actual class work, as well as ask lots of questions! Meet with Cheryl Rowe (Principal), Andrea Budd (Head of Curriculum), several teachers, OpenSTEM’s Arjen Lentz (Chief Explorer) and Dr Claire Reeler, who leads the Understanding Our World program development.
Join us on Thursday 24 November 2016, 3:30pm at Seville Road State School library!
Free event. RSVP today. Drinks and nibbles will be provided.
You can also download this invite as a PDF leaflet to pass on to others.
Can’t make it on the 24th?
Contact OpenSTEM to arrange a visit to your school and discuss implementation options.
Since implementing this program I've really noticed how the students are improving.
Trent Perry, Teacher