Resources+for+SOSE

School Excursions Canberra has some good information about booking excursions. It has tips for schools travelling to Canberra and highlights places of interest. It also highlights other places of interest throughout Australia, and provides some tips for planning excursions.

[|National Curriculum Information] Find out where the National Curriculum is up to. What Key Learning Areas have been written up and what they will incorporate. A MUST for new teachers to keep you up to date and informed.

[|The Learning Federation e-content] - General Social and Environmental Education resources to use with all students.

[|Pictures Australia] 'These slideshows creates a path through vast tracts of Australia's heritage and offer a distinctively new visual resource. For example, students can travel to Antarctica with Mawson, see some of Australia's finest cartoonists social and political commentary, view historical images of climate extremes such as droughts and floods, or discover how advertising has changed over time. Created in partnership with The Le@rning Federation each trail is accompanied by educational value statements intended to help State and Territory teachers make connections with their respective Curricula.' Useful for all ages across the curriculum.

[|Screen Australia] Screen Australia gives teachers free access to short education film clips from one of the Nations largest archives. Each clip comes with a teacher friendly background history of the clip, lesson ideas and further linked resources related to the clip. Teachers can search clips by SOSE topic or age level. The level of the clips start from Upper Primary. Teachers are also able to order any content that they see on the site for future viewing in their own classroom.

[|Assessment For Learning] This website provides material relevant to your State or Territory as well as scaffolding activities, resources for students and teachers, assessment rubrics, annotated worksamples and follow-up teaching and learning activities.

[|Graphic Organisers] This website has a range of different graphic organiser templates that can be used in many stages of an integrated inquriy unit of work. They can be used to structure writing projects, to help in problem solving and decision making and planning and brainstorming. The templates are very clear and open in a pdf format for saving or printing. Good variety. Can be used K-6.

Six Thinking Hats is a proven and practical thinking tool. It helps students think clearly and thoroughly by directing their thinking attention in one direction at a time--facts, creativity, benefits, cautions, feelings, and process. The use of hats encourages students to use the thinking tools as hats are easy to put on and to take off. Each hat is a different colour which represents a different focus in thinking.
 * Practical thinking tools for students: [|de Bono for schools] - ****//Six Thinking Hats K-College //**

[|Mrs Mac's Library Site] Has links to many HSIE/SOSE webquests. The site is made specifically to cover the NSW curriculum but there certainly is places where these webquests would be useful in ACT as well. Covers many HSIE/SOSE topics.

[|EdNA] This link will take you to the home page of the Education Network Australia (EdNA) website. It offers a range of resources for all different subject areas and age groups, including websites, videos, activity ideas and information on topics for teachers. The SOSE resources are split into subcategories so finiding something relevent to your topic is easy. This link will take you directly to the [|SOSE resources.]

[|Australians At Work Film Australia:Digital Learning] - has many SOSE/HSIE videos that can be used as stimulus in teaching. This site promotes meaningful and worthwhile digital learning, so most of the video clips are useful for a teacher. Many of the videos are actually more suitable for high school age children but there are still many that can be used in the primary school.

[|ABC Education - Schools] - a guide to school programs to be broadcast on the ABC up until December 2009. Many of these programs will cover SOSE topics for both lower and upper primary. Up coming short documentaries include Charles Kingsford Smith and Caroline Chisholm as well as many others available.

This website is designed to assist teachers design a unit of work in SoSE for stages 1, 2 and 3. It uses the Multiple Intelligences and Bloom's Taxonomy grids and some of the units include: "Places we know", "Australia your standing in it" and "Government". [|http://www.cap.nsw.edu.au/teachers/tech_based_resources/MI_pages/INDEX.HTM]

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">__[|Political Cartoons]__: by Peter Nicholson - Covers lots of topics from civics, politics, Indigenous, environment, etc.All okay to use for non-commercial purposes provided you print under the cartoon: "Cartoon by Nicholson from "The Australian" newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au". Also check out [|www.moir.com.au] for Alan Moir cartoons and the National Museum of Australia website as they have an exhibition every year of the best cartoons.

[] This website is great for suggesting ideas for a great range of SoSE toipcs that covers different areas of the QLD curriculum that can easily be translated into the curriculum of other states and territories. It caters for years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

[|Get Connected Magazine (World Vision Australia)] Links to a number of PDF files published by World Vision Australia as part of their Get Connected magazine (available to order for schools). The six published editions cover topics such as water, disasters, our Pacific neighbours, child rights, the global food crisis and global citizenship. The fact sheets and lesson activities are great classroom resources for teachers. Some of the activities are linked to the Get Connected magazine which should be available within the school or can be ordered through the World Vision Australia website.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[]- This is a great website that provides teachers with resources that they can download and use in the classroom and has links for stages 1,2, and 3. The site is designed to support teachers in teaching the HSIE syllabus.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|The Navigator] This website is based around exploration and the dicovery of Australia. It covers all aspects of ship travel, important roles, parts and names of ships, navigation and mapping. Important figures of history such as Captain Cook are also identified and explored with a series of fun interactive games and activities. This site would be suited for upper primary levels (4-6), and can be utilized when exploring topics such as the first fleet and convict era.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|NASA Podcasts] Podcasts from the staff at NASA, Vodcasts from outer space - similar to google earth but with commentary. Excellent resource when looking at global issues, comparing past and future, the physical elements and distribution of landmasses/water etc..

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|Petes Power Point Station] This site offers a wide range of powerpoints, interactive whiteboard activities for children, lesson plan ideas for teachers and links to a wide variety of other useful sites. The material is suitable for all ages groups K-6. It covers topics from Australian specific geography, history and civic and citenzenship to world history, earth and space.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|Miniature Earth Project] Thought provoking video that uses the idea of reducing the world’s population to a community of only 100 people to understand the many differences across cultures, religion, socio-economic status, health and education around the world. The images are powerful but not inappropriate for middle to upper primary children. The figures used in the video have been formulated based on those gained from UN population distribution figures.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|Virtual Excursions] A site that provides teachers with a lot of information about constructing "virtual" excursions. There are a number of background articles that include "hints and tips" and "how to's". The site has links to some quality examples as well as a step by step guide on how to create your own. This type of excursion could never replace the real thing but it does provide access to places previously inaccessible perhaps for certain students or simply because of time and distance.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|Teacher & Student Blog Creation] Comprehensive Australian website that provides teachers with a variety of useful resources focusing on ICT use in the classroom. The site enables students and teachers to create password protected blogs enabling safe publishing - as well as collaborative blogs whereby students can communicate with others around the world. The use of the site should be approved by the school executive. There is an instructional video on the site providing valuable information on setting up a class blog. Links to a variety of other teacher and school blogs are well worth a visit to see how this toll has been implemented in a variety of educational settings and purposes including those with a focus on sose outcomes.

[|Connexions] Connexions is a free environment for collaboratively developing, free sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. It contains a collection of educational materials for everyone - from children to college students to professionals - all organised into modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|Australian Federation of Societies for Studies of Society and Environment (AFSSSE)] This website is a consortium of five professional associations, formed in order to act as the peak organisation for the broad area of study known as SOSE. This resource could be of great assistance when planning SOSE units within a school.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 90%;">[|Teaching Australia: Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited] This is an independent national body, funded by the Australian Government. It works with national associations representing teachers, principals and teacher educators to strenghten and advance the teaching profession, making this a great resource to become familiar and connected with.

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