Content focus:
In this unit, students explore countries of the Asia-Pacific region and the environmental challenges they face. In doing so, students explore and reflect upon similarities, differences and the importance of intercultural understanding and investigate the environmental challenges faced by selected countries. |
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.
- Sustainability: the capacity of the environment to continue to support our lives and the lives of other living creatures into the future e.g. extent of environmental change; environmental management practices; sustainability initiatives.
- Change: explaining geographical phenomena by investigating how they have developed over time. For example: changes to environmental and human characteristics of places.
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Outcomes:
A student:
- describes the diverse features and characteristics of places and environments
- explains interactions and connections between people, places and environments
- compares and contrasts influences on the management of places and environments
- acquires, processes and communicates geographical information using geographical tools for inquiry.
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Inquiry skills:
Acquiring geographical information
- develop geographical questions to investigate and plan an inquiry
- collect and record relevant geographical data and information, using ethical protocols, from primary data and secondary information sources, for example, by observing, by interviewing, conducting surveys, or using maps, visual representations, statistical sources and reports, the media or the internet
Processing geographical information
- evaluate sources for their usefulness
- represent data in different forms, for example plans, graphs, tables, sketches and diagrams
- represent different types of geographical information by constructing maps that conform to cartographic conventions using spatial technologies as appropriate
- interpret geographical data and information, using digital and spatial technologies as appropriate, and identify spatial distributions, patterns and trends, and infer relationships to draw conclusions
Communicating geographically
- present findings and ideas in a range of communication forms as appropriate
- reflect on their learning to propose individual and collective action in response to a contemporary geographical challenge and describe the expected effects of their proposal on different groups of people.
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Geographical tools:
Maps
- large-scale maps, small-scale maps, sketch maps, political maps, topographic maps, flowline maps
- maps to identify location, latitude, direction, distance, map references, spatial distributions and patterns
Graphs and statistics
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pictographs, data tables, column graphs, line graphs, climate graphs
- multiple graphs on a geographical theme
- statistics to find patterns
Spatial technologies
Visual representations
- photographs, aerial photographs, illustrations, flow diagrams, annotated diagrams, multimedia, web tools
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