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This Week in HASS – term 2, week 2

It is hoped that by now all the school routine is shaking back down into place. No doubt you’ve all got ANZAC Day marked on your class calendars, and this may be a good time to revisit some of the celebrations with the younger students. This week our younger students are looking at types of homes and local Aboriginal groups. Students in Year 3 are investigating climate zones and biomes of Australia, while students in Years 4 to 6 are looking at Europe in the ‘Age of Discovery’ (the 15th to 18th centuries).

Foundation/Prep to Year 3

Students in our stand-alone Foundation/Prep class (Unit F.2), in line with the name of the unit “Where We Live”, are examining different types of homes and talking about how people get the things they need (such as shelter, warmth etc) from their homes. Students examine a wide range of different types of homes including freestanding houses, apartments, townhouses, as well as boats, caravans and other less conventional homes.

Students in integrated Foundation/Prep classes (Unit F.6) and in years 1 (Unit 1.2), 2 (Unit 2.2) and 3 (Unit 3.2) are finding out about their local Aboriginal groups, in the area of their school. Students will be considering how the groups are connected to the land and what changes they have seen since they first arrived in that area, thousands of years before. Remember, if you need information about your local Aboriginal group, feel free to contact us and ask.

Years 3 to 6

Students in Year 3, doing the Unit “Exploring Climates” (Unit 3.6) are consolidating work done last week on climate zones and the biomes of Australia. This week they are focusing on matching the climate zone to the region of Australia. Students in Years 4 (Unit 4.2), 5 (Unit 5.2) and 6 (Unit 6.2) are shifting focus across to Europe in the 15th to 18th centuries – the ‘Age of Discovery’.

This sets the scene for further examinations of explorers and the research project students will undertake this term, as well as introducing students to the conditions in Europe which later led to colonisation, thereby providing some important background information for Australian history in Term 3. Students can examine Spain, Portugal and England and the role that they played in exploring the world at this time.

Science!

Did you know: the Understanding Our World™ program also fully covers the Science component of the Australian Curriculum at each year level, integrated with the HASS materials!

In line with the Age of Discovery explorer theme, student start their Science activity: “Ancient Sailing Ships“. A perennial favourite with students, this activity involves making a simple model sailing ship and then examining the forces acting on the ship, the properties of different parts of the ships and the materials from which they were made, examining different types of sails (square-rigged versus lateen-rigged), as well as considering the phases of matter associated with sailing ships.

Some schools set up water troughs and fans and race the ships against each other, which causes much excitement! This activity also helps students understand some of the challenges faced by explorers who travelled the world in similar vessels.

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.

Mildred Dresselhaus, the Queen of Carbon | NY Times

“Dr. Dresselhaus, who helped transform carbon into the superstar of modern materials science, was renowned for her efforts to promote the cause of women in science.”

Millie Dresselhaus (nee Spiewak) high school yearbook 1948 — 1948 A tribute at Hunter High School.

“Mildred (Millie) Dresselhaus, a professor emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose research into the fundamental properties of carbon helped transform it into the superstar of modern materials science and the nanotechnology industry, died on Monday in Cambridge, Mass. She was 86.”

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).

Upcoming free event in Brisbane (24 November): Understanding Our World – showcase @ Seville (Holland Park)

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.

What is Understanding Our World ?

Complete integrated units, 4 units per year level
Prep to Year 6, with multi-year level integration:
- P-2: History and Geography + Science
- 3-4: History, Geography and Civics & Citizenship + Science
- 5-6: History, Geography, Civics & Citizenship and Economics & Business + Science
Aligned with the Australian Curriculum for HASS + Science (comprehensive)
Assessment tasks aligned with achievement standards in the Australian Curriculum
Teacher handbooks, student workbooks, assessment guides
Hundreds of beautiful colour resource PDFs with many custom maps and photos
More information: https://openstem.com.au/programs/understanding-our-world

Can’t make it on the 24^th?
Contact OpenSTEM to arrange a visit to your school and discuss implementation options.

Conversations on Collected Health Data

There are more and more wearable devices that collect a variety of health data, and other health records are kept electronically. More often than not, the people whose data it is don’t actually have access. There are very important issues to consider, and you could use this for a conversation with your students, and in assignments.

On the individual level, questions such as

Who should own your health data?
Should you be able to get an overview of who has what kind of your data? (without fuzzy vague language)
Should you be able to access your own data? (directly out of a device, or online service where a device sends its data)
Should you be able to request a company to completely remove data from their records?

For society, questions like

Should a company be allowed to hoard data, or should they be required to make it accessible (open data) for other researchers?

A comment piece in this week’s Nature entitled “Lift the blockade on health data” could be used as a starting point a conversation and for additional information:

http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/535345a

Technology titans, such as Google and Apple, are moving into health. For all the potential benefits, the incorporation of people’s health data into algorithmic ‘black boxes’ could harm science and exacerbate inequalities, warn John Wilbanks and Eric Topol in a Comment piece in this week’s Nature. “When it comes to control over our own data, health data must be where we draw the line,” they stress.

Cryptic digital profiling is already shaping society; for example, online adverts are tailored to people’s age, location, spending and browsing habits. Wilbanks and Topol envision a future in which “companies are able to trade people’s disease profiles, unbeknown to them” and where “health decisions are abstruse and difficult to challenge, and advances in understanding are used to aggressively market health-related services to people — regardless of whether those services actually benefit their health.”

The authors call for a campaigning movement similar to the environmental one to break open how people’s data are being used, and to illuminate how such information could be used in the future. In their view, “the creation of credible competitors that are open source is the most promising way to regulate” corporations that have come to “resemble small nations in their own right”.