Ali's+comments+re+Yr+9

I think that this course really needs to be looked at. I love teaching aspects of it, but the content that is supposed to be covered according to the current curriculum is ridiculous. Again, it is an issue of what do the kids need to know, what will they remember and what skills should they be developing.

The problem with the course being so content heavy is that I inevitably resort to teaching methods and activities that will get the content covered quickly and at times this means engagement and applied learning are lost! Everything feels so rushed and it is really hard to let the kids get immersed because you know there are another three topics to study that term!

Here would be an adaptation that may work without making massive changes:

Term One: Detailed timeline of Australian History - spend a couple of lessons per decade (at the beginning have the start of Aboriginal civilisation and then jump to colonisation). During the study of each decade consider major events and get the kids to add info and pictures about these events to the timeline. This would give kids a clear, chronological view of our history and then the rest of the year can focus in on specific events from the timeline.

Term Two: Federation and Government - as much as this can be a bit dry, it actually works quite well and is a fairly good topic for teaching them to write their first real essay.

Term Three: Australia at War - if the general view was to spend less time on the wars then you could do one term that explores our involvement in the Boer War, WW1 and WW2. I would start with the current soldier research project and then move through each conflict, going through causes, nature of war, soldier experience, aus involvement, etc.

Term Four: Australian Identity - this would draw in on the whole course. Topics that could be covered include Ned Kelly, the ANZAC legend, the 'digger' image, etc. Then the kids could do a project on an iconic part of the Australian identity, exploring where it originated from, how it has developed over time, its current status/relevance and its accuracy (is it just a stereotype?). This would make the kids really consider and question history - where have these things developed from, etc? It would also be a lot of fun! (Could do great topics!)