Content focus:

Students explore places across a range of scales within Australia and Australia’s location in the world. They describe connections people, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, have with places, both locally and globally. Students identify factors affecting people’s accessibility to places.

Geographical concepts:

• Place: the significance of places and what they are like. For example: places students live in and belong to and why they are important.
• Space: the significance of location and spatial distribution, and ways people organise and manage the spaces that we live in. For example: location of a place in relation to other familiar places.
• Environment: the significance of the environment in human life, and the important interrelationships between humans and the environment. For example, how and why places should be looked after.
• Interconnection: no object of geographical study can be viewed in isolation. For example: local and global links people have with places and the special connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples maintain with Country/Place.
• Scale: the way that geographical phenomena and problems can be examined at different spatial levels. For example: various scales by which places can be defined such as local suburbs, towns and large cities.
  

Key inquiry questions:

• Where are places located in Australia
• How are people connected to places?
• What factors affect peoples connection with places?

Outcomes:
A student:

• describes features of places and the connections people have with places
• communicates geographical information and uses geographical tools for inquiry
• describes the connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have with Country
• uses maps of different scales and types.

Inquiry skills:
Acquiring geographical information

• pose geographical questions
• collect and record geographical data and information, for example, by observing or using visual representations

Processing geographical information

• represent data by constructing maps
• draw conclusions based on interpretation of geographical information sorted into categories

Communicating geographically

• present findings in a range of communication forms

Geographical tools:
Maps

• pictorial maps, large-scale maps, world maps, globe

Graphs and statistics

• proportional graphs and weather data

Visual representations

• photographs, illustrations, story books, multimedia, web tools

Lessons and worksheets:

Lesson 1: States, capitals, cities, regions of Australia :: Worksheet 1 :: Resource Sheet 1 :: PowerPoint (maps)
Lesson 2: Australia’s location in the world :: Worksheet 1
Lesson 3: Finding places on maps – distances, locations
Lesson 4: Aboriginal connections with country :: Worksheet 1
Lesson 5: Aboriginal connections with country – A picture book study
Lesson 6: A survey of connections that our class has with other places :: Worksheet 1
Lesson 7: Places in the news – where are they? :: Worksheet 1
Lesson 8: Using globes and maps – scale, legends, grids :: Worksheet 1