AC9HG8S02 – Year 8 Humanities and Social Sciences: Questioning and researching using geographical methods

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.

Elaborations

• • identifying appropriate primary research methods, including fieldwork, to collect original materials using specialised digital tools; for example, field observations such as sketches or measurements of landscapes or landforms, or digital tools to recreate topographic features of a landform
• • collecting relevant secondary research materials online using search terms and functions such as “allintitle: geomorphological hazards” or “define: megacities” to identify relevant geographical information
• • identifying and respecting protocols for consultation with communities of First Nations Australians when organising primary research or fieldwork, such as when discussing Dreaming stories about the formation, meaning and interconnections of Australian landscapes and landforms
• • evaluating research materials for relevance (for example, “Does the information reflect current thinking about urbanisation?”) and reliability (for example, “Who is/are the author/s? Does the author reference other experts in the field?”)
• • comparing findings from primary research methods, including fieldwork, with those from secondary research materials for relevance and reliability; for example, comparing field sketches showing the impact of a geomorphological hazard with newspaper reports on the extent of damage; comparing survey and interview data about people’s perception of their suburb with a government report on the impacts of urbanisation
• • representing relevant and reliable data and information in appropriate formats to combine ideas, using digital tools; for example, creating annotated diagrams to show the changes to a landform over time or using digital mapping tools to show the cultural and demographic diversity of First Nations Australians
• • representing spatial distributions of different types of geographical phenomena by constructing appropriate maps at different scales that conform to cartographic conventions; for example, constructing a map to show the relationship between landforms such as mountains and landscapes such as deserts, or contrasting the spatial distribution of population in Australia and/or China

Achievement Standard This Supports

This Content Descriptor contributes to the following Achievement Standard: