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This Week in HASS – term 2, week 1

Welcome to the new school term, and we hope you all had a wonderful Easter! Many of our students are writing NAPLAN this term, so the HASS program provides a refreshing focus on something different, whilst practising skills that will help students prepare for NAPLAN without even realising it! Both literacy and numeracy are foundation skills of much of the broader curriculum and are reinforced within our HASS program as well. Meantime our younger students are focusing on local landscapes this term, while our older students are studying explorers of different continents.

Foundation to Year 3

Our youngest students (Foundation/Prep Unit F.2) start the term by looking at different types of homes. A wide selection of places can be homes for people around the world, so students can compare where they live to other types of homes. Students in integrated Foundation/Prep and Years 1 to 3 (Units F.6; 1.2; 2.2 and 3.2) start their examination of the local landscape by examining how Aboriginal people arrived in Australia 60,000 years ago. They learn how modern humans expanded across the world during the last Ice Age, reaching Australia via South-East Asia. Starting with this broad focus allows them to narrow down in later weeks, finally focusing on their local community.

Year 3 to Year 6

Students in Years 3 to 6 (Units 3.6; 4.2; 5.2 and 6.2) are looking at explorers this term. Each year level focuses on explorers of a different part of the world. Year 3 students investigate different climate zones and explorers of extreme climate areas (such as the Poles, or the Central Deserts of Australia). Year 4 students examine Africa and South America and investigate how European explorers during the ‘Age of Discovery‘ encountered different environments, animals and people on these continents. The students start with prehistory and this week they are looking at how Ancient Egyptians and Bantu-speaking groups explored Africa thousands of years ago. They also examine Great Zimbabwe. Year 5 students are studying North America, and this week are starting with the Viking voyages to Greenland and Newfoundland, in the 10th century. Year 6 students focus on Asia, and start with a study in Economics by examining the Dutch East India Company of the 17th and 18th centuries. (Remember HASS for years 5 and 6 includes History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship and Economics and Business – we cover it all, plus Science!)

You might be wondering how on earth we integrate such apparently disparate topics for multi-year classes! Well, our Teacher Handbooks are full of tricks to make teaching these integrated classes a breeze. The Teacher Handbooks with lesson plans and hints for how to integrate across year levels are included, along with the Student Workbooks, Model Answers and Assessment Guides, within our bundles for each unit. Teachers using these units have been thrilled at how easy it is to use our material in multi-year level classes, whilst knowing that each student is covering curriculum-appropriate material for their own year level.

This Week in HASS – term 1, week 9

The last week of our first unit – time to wrap up, round off, finish up any work not yet done and to perhaps get a preliminary taste of what’s to come in future units. Easter holidays are just around the corner. Our youngest students are having a final discussion about celebrations; slightly older students are finishing off their quest for Aunt Madge, by looking at landmarks and the older students are considering democracy in Australia, compared to its early beginnings in Ancient Greece.

Foundation to Year 3

Foundation/Prep (units F.1 and F.6) students are finishing off their discussions about celebrations, just in time for the Easter holidays, by looking at celebrations around the world. Teachers may wish to focus on how other countries celebrate Easter, with passion plays, processions and special meals. Students in Years 1 (unit 1.1), 2 (unit 2.1) and 3 (unit 3.1) are finishing off their Aunt Madge activity, looking at landmarks in Australia and around the world. There is the option for teachers to concentrate on Australian landmarks in this lesson, setting the stage for some local history studies in the next unit, next term.

Years 3 to 6

Ancient Greek pottery with votes scratched into the surface

Older students in Years 3 (unit 3.5), 4 (unit 4.1), 5 (unit 5.1) and 6 (unit 6.1) start looking ahead and laying the foundations for later studies on the Australian system of government and democracy, by comparing democracy as it arose in Ancient Greece, with the modern Australian democratic system. Our word for democracy comes from the Ancient Greek words demos (people) and kratia (power). Students move on from their discussion of Eratosthenes to looking at the Ancient Greek democratic system, which was to lay the groundwork for modern democratic systems around the world. Discussing Ancient Greek democracy leads students to consider the rights and responsibilities of being a citizen, at both the local and international levels. Students also consider who could and could not vote and what this meant for different groups. They can also touch on the ancient practise of ostracism, which can lead to ethical debates around fair election practises. By considering these fundamental concepts, students are better able to relate the ideas around modern democracy to their own lives.

Guess the Artefact!

Today we are announcing a new challenge for our readers – Guess the Artefact! We post pictures of an artefact and you can guess what it is. The text will slowly reveal the answer, through a process of examination and deduction – see if you can guess what it is, before the end. We are starting this challenge with an item from our year 6 Archaeological Dig workshop. Year 6 (unit 6.3) students concentrate on Federation in their Australian History segment – so that’s your first clue! Study the image and then start reading the text below.

Our first question is what is it? Study the image and see if you can work out what it might be – it’s an dirty, damaged piece of paper. It seems to be old. Does it have a date? Ah yes, there are 3 dates – 23, 24 and 25 October, 1889, so we deduce that it must be old, dating to the end of the 19th century. We will file the exact date for later consideration. We also note references to railways. The layout of the information suggests a train ticket. So we have a late 19th century train ticket!

Now why do we have this train ticket and whose train ticket might it have been? The ticket is First Class, so this is someone who could afford to travel in style. Where were they going? The railways mentioned are Queensland Railways, Great Northern Railway, New South Wales Railways and the stops are Brisbane, Wallangara, Tenterfield and Sydney. Now we need to do some research. Queensland Railways and New South Wales Railways seem self-evident, but what is Great Northern Railway? A brief hunt reveals several possible candidates: 1) a contemporary rail operator in Victoria; 2) a line in Queensland connecting Mt Isa and Townsville and 3) an old, now unused railway in New South Wales. We can reject option 1) immediately. Option 2) is the right state, but the towns seem unrelated. That leaves option 3), which seems most likely. Looking into the NSW option in more detail we note that it ran between Sydney and Brisbane, with a stop at Wallangara to change gauge – Bingo!

More research reveals that the line reached Wallangara in 1888, the year before this ticket was issued. Only after 1888 was it possible to travel from Brisbane to Sydney by rail, albeit with a compulsory stop at Wallangara. We note also that the ticket contains a meal voucher for dinner at the Railway Refreshment Rooms in Wallangara. Presumably passengers overnighted in Wallangara before continuing on to Sydney on a different train and rail gauge. Checking the dates on the ticket, we can see evidence of an overnight stop, as the next leg continues from Wallangara on the next day (24 Oct 1889). However, next we come to some important information. From Wallangara, the next leg of the journey represented by this ticket was only as far as Tenterfield. Looking on a map, we note that Tenterfield is only about 25 km away – hardly a day’s train ride, more like an hour or two at the most (steam trains averaged about 24 km/hr at the time). From this we deduce that the ticket holder wanted to stop at Tenterfield and continue their journey on the next day.

We know that we’re studying Australian Federation history, so the name Tenterfield should start to a ring a bell – what happened in Tenterfield in 1889 that was relevant to Australian Federation history? The answer, of course, is that Henry Parkes delivered his Tenterfield Oration there, and the date? 24 October, 1889! If we look into the background, we quickly discover that Henry Parkes was on his way from Brisbane back to Sydney, when he stopped in Tenterfield. He had been seeking support for Federation from the government of the colony of Queensland. He broke his journey in Tenterfield, a town representative of those towns closer to the capital of another colony than their own, which would benefit from the free trade arrangements flowing from Federation. Parkes even discussed the issue of different rail gauges as something that would be solved by Federation! We can therefore surmise that this ticket may well be the ticket of Henry Parkes, documenting his journey from Brisbane to Sydney in October, 1889, during which he stopped and delivered the Tenterfield Oration!

This artefact is therefore relevant as a source for anyone studying Federation history – as well as giving us a more personal insight into the travels of Henry Parkes in 1889, it allows us to consider aspects of life at the time:

the building of railway connections across Australia, in a time before motor cars were in regular use;
the issue of different size railway gauges in the different colonies and what practical challenges that posed for a long distance rail network;
the ways in which people travelled and the speed with which they could cross large distances;
what rail connections would have meant for small, rural towns, to mention just a few.
Why might the railway companies have provided meal vouchers?

These are all sidelines of inquiry, which students may be interested to pursue, and which might help them to engage with the subject matter in more detail.

In our Archaeological Dig Workshops, we not only engage students in the processes and physical activities of the dig, but we provide opportunities for them to use the artefacts to practise deduction, reasoning and research – true inquiry-based learning, imitating real-world processes and far more engaging and empowering than more traditional bookwork.

This Week in HASS – term 1, week 8

As we move into the final weeks of term, and the Easter holiday draws closer, our youngest students are looking at different kinds of celebrations in Australia. Students in years 1 to 3 are looking at their global family and students in years 3 to 6 are chasing Aunt Madge around the world, being introduced to Eratosthenes and examining Shadows and Light.

Foundation to Year 3

Our standalone Foundation/Prep students (Unit F.1) are studying celebrations in Australia and thinking about which is their favourite. It may well be Easter with its bunnies and chocolate eggs, which lies just around the corner now! They also get a chance to consider whether we should add any extra celebrations into our calendar in Australia. Those Foundation/Prep students in an integrated class with Year 1 students (Unit F.5), as well as Year 1 (Unit 1.1), 2 (Unit 2.1) and 3 (Unit 3.1) students are investigating where they, and other family members, were born and finding these places on the world map. Students are also examining features of the world map – including the different continents, North and South Poles, the equator and the oceans. Students also get a chance to undertake the Aunt Madge’s Suitcase Activity, in which they follow Aunt Madge around the world, learning about different countries and landmarks, as they go. Aunt Madge’s Suitcase is extremely popular with students of all ages – as it can easily be adapted to cover material at different depths. The activity encourages students to interact with the world map, whilst learning to recognise major natural and cultural landmarks in Australia and around the world.

Years 3 to 6

Students in Year 3 (Unit 3.5), who are integrated with Year 4, as well as the Year 4 (Unit 4.1), 5 (Unit 5.1) and 6 (Unit 6.1) students, have moved on to a new set of activities this week. The older students approach the Aunt Madge’s Suitcase Activity in more depth, deriving what items Aunt Madge has packed in her suitcase to match the different climates which she is visiting, as well as delving into each landmark visited in more detail. These landmarks are both natural and cultural and, although several are in Australia, examples are given from around the world, allowing teachers to choose their particular focus each time the activity is undertaken. As well as following Aunt Madge, students are introduced to Eratosthenes. Known as the ‘Father of Geography’, Eratosthenes also calculated the circumference of the Earth. There is an option for teachers to overlap with parts of the Maths curriculum here. Eratosthenes also studied the planets and used shadows and sunlight for his calculations, which provides the link for the Science activities – Shadows and Light, Sundials and Planets of the Solar System.

Next week is the last week of our first term units. By now students have completed the bulk of their work for the term, and teachers are able to assess most of the HASS areas already.

Am I a Neanderthal?

The whole question of how Neanderthals are related to us (modern humans) has been controversial ever since the first Neanderthal bones were found in Germany in the 19th century. Belonging to an elderly, arthritic individual (a good example of how well Neanderthals cared for each other in social groups), the bones were reconstructed to show a stooping individual, with a more ape-like gait, leading to Neanderthals being described as the “Missing Link” between apes and humans, and given the epithet “ape-man”.

Who were the Neanderthals?

Modern reconstruction – Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

Neanderthals lived in the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, and as far east as the Altai Mountains in Central Asia, between about 250,000 and about 30,000 years ago. They were a form of ancient human with certain physical characteristics – many of which probably helped them cope with the cold of Ice Ages. Neanderthals evolved out of an earlier ancestor – Homo erectus, possibly through another species – Homo heidelbergensis. They had a larger brain than modern humans, but it was shaped slightly differently, with less development in the prefrontal cortex, which allows critical thinking and problem-solving, and larger development at the back of the skull, and in areas associated with memory in our brains. It is possible that Neanderthals had excellent memory, but poor analytical skills. They were probably not good at innovation – a skill which became vital as the Ice Age ended and the global climate warmed, sea levels rose and plant and animal habitats changed.

Neanderthals were stockier than modern humans, with shorter arms and legs, and probably stronger and all-round tougher. They had a larger rib cage, and probably bigger lungs, a bigger nose, larger eyes and little to no chin. Most of these adaptations would have helped them in Ice Age Europe and Asia – a more compact body stayed warmer more easily and was tough enough to cope with a harsh environment. Large lungs helped oxygenate the blood and there is evidence that they had more blood supply to the face – so probably had warm, ruddy cheeks. The large nose warmed up the air they breathed, before it reached their lungs, reducing the likelihood of contracting pneumonia. Neanderthals are known to have had the same range of hair colours as modern humans and fair skin, red hair and freckles may have been more common.

They made stone tools, especially those of the type called Mousterian, constructed simple dwellings and boats, made and used fire, including for cooking their food, and looked after each other in social groups. Evidence of skeletons with extensive injuries occurring well before death, shows that these individuals must have been cared for, not only whilst recovering from their injuries, but also afterwards, when they would probably not have been able to obtain food themselves. Whether or not Neanderthals intentionally buried their dead is an area of hot controversy. It was once thought that they buried their dead with flowers in the grave, but the pollen was found to have been introduced accidentally. However, claims of intentional burial are still debated from other sites.

What Happened to the Neanderthals?

Anatomically modern humans emerged from Africa about 100,000 years ago. Recent studies of human genetics suggests that modern humans had many episodes of mixing with various lineages of human ancestors around the planet. Modern humans moved into Asia and Europe during the Ice Age, expanding further as the Ice Age ended. Modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals for about 60,000 years, before the Neanderthals disappeared. It is thought that a combination of factors led to the decline of Neanderthals. Firstly, the arrival of modern humans, followed by the end of the Ice Age, brought about a series of challenges which Neanderthals might have been unable to adapt to, as quickly as necessary. Modern humans have more problem solving and innovation capability, which might have meant that they were able to out-compete Neanderthals in a changing environment. The longest held theory is that out ancestors wiped out the Neanderthals in the first genocide in (pre)history. A find of Neanderthals in a group, across a range of ages, some from the same family group, who all died at the same time, is one of the sites, which might support this theory, although we don’t actually know who (or what) killed the group. Cut marks on their bones show that they were killed by something using stone tools. Finally, there is more and more evidence of what are called “transitional specimens”. These are individuals who have physical characteristics of both groups, and must represent inter-breeding. An example is the 4 year old child from the site of Abrigo do Lagar Velho in Portugal, which seems to have a combination of modern and Neanderthal features. The discovery of Neanderthals genes in many modern people living today is also proof that we must have interbred with Neanderthals in the past. It is thought that the genes were mixed several times, in several parts of the world.

Am I a Neanderthal?

So how do we know if we have Neanderthals genes? Neanderthal genes have some physical characteristics, but also other attributes that we can’t see. In terms of physical characteristics, Neanderthal aspects to the skull include brow ridges (ridges of bone above the eyes, under the eyebrows); a bump on the back of the head – called an occipital chignon, or bun, because it looks like a ‘bun’ hairstyle, built into the bone; a long skull (like Captain Jean-Lu Picard from Star Trek – actor Patrick Stewart); a small, or non-existent chin; a large nose; a large jaw with lots of space for wisdom teeth; wide fingers and thumbs; thick, straight hair; large eyes; red hair, fair skin and freckles! The last may seem a little surprising, but it appears that the genes for these characteristics came from Neanderthals – who had a wide range of hair colours, fair skin and, occasionally, freckles. Increased blood flow to the face also would have given Neanderthals lovely rosy cheeks!

Less obvious characteristics include resistance to certain diseases – parts of our immune systems, especially with reference to European and Asian diseases; less positively, an increased risk of other diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. Certain genes linked to depression are present, but ‘switched off’ in Neanderthals. The way that these genes link to depression, and their role in the lifestyles of early people (where they may have had benefits that are no longer relevant) are future topics for research and may help us understand more about ourselves.

Neanderthals genes are present in modern populations from Europe, Asia, Northern Africa, Australia and Oceania. So, depending on which parts of the world our ancestry is from, we may have up to 4% of our genetics from long-dead Neanderthal ancestors!

This Week in HASS – term 1, week 7

This week our youngest students are looking in depth at different types of celebrations; slightly older students are examining how people got around in the ‘Olden Days’; and our older primary students have some extra time to finish their activities from last week.

Foundation to Year 3

In the stand-alone Foundation (Prep) unit (F.1), students are discussing celebrations – which ones do we recognise in Australia, how these compare with celebrations overseas, and what were these celebrations like in days gone by. Our integrated Foundation (Prep) unit (F.5) and students in Years 1 (1.1), 2 (2.1) and 3 (3.1), are examining Transport in the Past – how did their grandparents get around? How did people get around 100 years ago? How did kids get to school? How did people do the shopping? Students even get to dream about how we might get around in the future…

Years 3 to 6

At OpenSTEM we recognise that good activities, which engage students and allow for real learning, take time. Nobody likes to get really excited about something and then be rushed through it and quickly moved on to something else. This part of the unit has lots of hands-on activities for Year 3 (3.5) students in an integrated class with Year 4, as well as Year 4 (4.1), 5 (5.1) and 6 (6.1) students. In recognition of that, two weeks are allowed for the students to really get into making Ice Ages and mud bricks, and working out how to survive the challenges of living in a Neolithic village – including how to trade, count and write. Having enough time allows for consolidation of learning, as well as allowing teachers to potentially split the class into different groups engaged in different activities, and then rotate the groups through the activities over a 2 week period.