AC9HC8S01 Year 8 Humanities and Social Sciences

AC9HC8S01 – Year 8 Humanities and Social Sciences: Questioning and researching

Strand

Skills

Substrand

Questioning and researching

This Content Descriptor from Year 8 Humanities and Social Sciences provides the specific knowledge and skills students should learn. Use it to plan lessons, create learning sequences, and design assessments that align with the Australian Curriculum v9.

Content Descriptor

develop questions to investigate Australia’s political and legal systems, and contemporary civic issues

Elaborations

• developing a key question and related questions to investigate an issue; for example, "How do young people effectively participate in democratic processes to influence issues that impact on them?", "How did public opinion help in persuading the government on the importance of providing a National Disability Insurance Scheme?"
• developing a range of closed and open-ended questions about a particular topic or issue; for example, “What are the main features of a democracy?”, “How are laws made?” and “What is the relationship between democracy and active citizenship?"
• considering current events to generate ideas for research; for example, how Australian governments have developed media and communications campaigns on public health issues to reach the culturally and linguistically diverse groups in Australia, why media coverage of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap reflects changing perspectives on Australia's national identity

Achievement Standard This Supports

This Content Descriptor contributes to the following Achievement Standard:

Year 8 ASHASCIVY8

Year 8 Humanities and Social Sciences Achievement Standard

By the end of Year 8, students explain how Australians are informed about and participate in their democracy. They describe the roles of political parties and elected representatives in Australian government. They explain the characteristics of laws, how laws are made and the types of law in Australia. Students identify ways in which Australians express different aspects of their identity and explain perspectives on Australia’s national identity. Students develop questions and locate, select and organise relevant information from different sources to investigate political and legal systems, and contemporary civic issues. They analyse information and identify and describe perspectives and challenges related to political, legal or civic issues. They explain the methods or strategies related to civic participation or action. Students use civics and citizenship knowledge, concepts, terms and references to evidence from sources to create descriptions, explanations and arguments.