Breaking Down the SOSE Essential Learnings

The Essential Learnings contain a lot of educational jargon. It is imperative that before teachers start to work with them that they understand each required element fully. So before I start planning lessons and units I need to thoroughly break down the Year 9 SOSE Essential Learnings.

Learning and Assessment Focus - Summarising into simple statements

• Investigate and inquire local, national and global issues and ideas
• Make connections between people and places
• Inquire, create and communicate in social and environmental contexts
• Individually and collaboratively respond creatively to issues
• Reflect on learning to evaluate different values and perspectives

Knowledge and Understanding - Specific knowledge that will need to be taught
Time, continuity and change
Social, political, economic and cultural changes and continuities are connected to particular events, ideas and contributions, and can be interpreted from different perspectives.

• Countries have been shaped over time by events such as war, political change and immigration
• Many important ideas (eg. democracy, citizen rights and decision making) were developed from ancient times and from other countries
  

Place and Space
Environments are defined by spatial patterns, human and physical interactions, and sustainable practices can balance human activity and environmental processes.

• Understand relationships between human activities and environment
• Human activities include cultural, economic and political activities
• The importance of sustainable practice

Ways of Working - Linking to Bloom's Taxonomy

• Identify (Remember)
• Investigate (Remember/Understand)
• Research (Understand)
• Apply (Apply)
• Analyse (Analyse)
• Evaluate (Evaluate)
• Decide (Evaluate)
• Reflect (Evaluate)
• Conclude (Evaluate)
• Respond (Create)

For remember and understand processes activities such as creating timelines, diagrams and models are useful.

Getting students to solve problems, make a map or write a diary entry enhance apply processes.

For analyse processes, creating a graph or flow chart, or having a debate can help to develop this level.

To help develop evaluate processes, students could make decisions that are justified and based on criteria, propose changes to a law or hold a board meeting on a controversial topic that must be voted on.

And finally, for create processes, students could design a new form of power, create a new monetary system or predict the outcome of a hypothetical event.