HUMANITIES
Humanities is a subject that I am quite passionate about especially due to the fact that History is one of my electives. While it is history that I am most passionate about I also really enjoy geography and economics. While humanities if often considered to be a subject that is boring and theoretical I believe that it is a subject in which you can get creative with, have a lot of fun while at the same time providing students with a number of life skills.
HISTORY:
While at Ballarat High I accompanied students to the Ballarat War Memorial, where they learnt about those who had lost their lives for our country. This excursion enabled students to make connections between what they had been learning at school and real life. Students were able to look at each of the names and see an individual who sacrificed their life for our country.
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During my time at Ballarat High I was able t teach several history lessons to students. These included lessons on WW1, WW2 and Kokoda. In order to teach these lessons I used a range of different strategies and approaches including Power Point presentations, human timelines, Web Quests, movies, research projects, See Think Wonder, introduction games and quizzes. While teaching history to year nine students I recognised the importance of relating information to students. This is as if students were able to connect what they were learning with something in their own lives (for an example imaging themselves, a brother, or friend, going off to fight at war) then they were more likely to retain the information.
Below I have included some lesson plans from some of the history lessons that I taught while at Ballarat High.
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Attached above is a Web Quest that I created while on placement at Yaapeet Primary for the year six students. Students had to use the web to answer a series of questions about Australian history. Not only did this activity get students to find out information about Australian history in a fun and engaging way, but it also taught students how to use the web as a research tool to gain information.
GEOGRAPHY:
As a part of a University assignment two other PSTs and myself conducted a presentation on how we would implement a lesson on geography to a class. We used the example of The Silk Road, and suggested that we would get students to map the Silk Road and the different areas of trade. We incorporated different items that resemble the different items of trade in order to make the task more hands on and memorable. This sort of task would assist in making a topic that can often be considered as dry or dull, more interesting.
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ECONOMICS:
While on placement at Essendon Primary I witnessed and taught several lessons on 'Tourist Town'. 'Tourist Town' is a project in which students are each given a budget (of pretend money) and have to implement some sort of made up business of their own. They have to take into consideration the different costs of setting up their business and have to aim to make a profit. Students could receive more money from good behaviour and could loose money when they were not doing the right thing. This project connected student learning to real-life and provided them with the opportunity to practice different skills that they will use in the future. I believe that it was so successful as students could see the relevance of why they were taking part in such a task.
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GLOBAL EDUCATION:
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Along with two other PSTs I created a Professional Development handbook on how you would go about teaching the topic of Human Rights and Social Justice. The purpose of this booklet is to provide pre-service teachers with essential strategies, activities, ideas and resources to use in the classroom to educate students about Human Rights. Developing this resource not only opened my eyes to different human rights issues, but it also enhanced my knowledge on how I would go about teaching the topic of human rights to students.
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