The Units of Work

The units of work provide ideas for teachers' to use in the early, primary, middle and senior secondary years of schooling, and enables students to achieve outcomes as stated in the State Syllabus documents.

The units use inquiry learning as the basis for unit organisation and implementation. This model uses seven stages to assist students with a teacher's guidance, to become motivated to investigate an issue, make connections with other material and then to take action.

The units in this resource are all based on the Integrating Socially planning and inquiry model, developed by Hamston and Murdoch in their text Integrating Socially: Planning Integrated Units of Work for Social Education. Their model forms a sound basis for organising the stages of inquiry.

Tuning In

Focus activities:

• Provide students with opportunities to become engaged with the topic;
• Ascertain students' initial curiosity about the topic; and
• Allow students to express their personal experience of the topic.

Preparing To Find Out

Focus activities:

• Establish what students already know about the topic;
• Provide students with a focus for the forthcoming experience; and
• Help in the planning of further experiences and activities.

Finding Out

Focus activities:

• Further stimulate the students curiosity;
• Provide new information, which may answer some of the students' earlier questions;
• Raise other questions for students to explore in the future;
• Challenge the students' knowledge, beliefs and values; and
• Help students to make sense of further activities and experiences which have been planned for them.

Sorting Out

Focus activities:

• Provide students with concrete means for sorting out and representing information and ideas arising from the 'finding out' stage;
• Provide students with the opportunity to process the information they have gathered and present this in a number of ways; and
• Allow for a diverse range of outcomes.

Going Further

Focus activities:

• Extend and challenge students' understanding about the topic; and
• Provide more information in order to broaden the range of understandings available to the students.

Making Connections

Focus activities:

• Help students draw conclusions about what they have learnt; and
• Provide opportunities for reflection both on what has been learnt and on the learning process itself.

Taking Action

Focus activities:

• Assist students to make links between their understanding and their experience in the real world;
• Enable students to make choices and develop the belief that they can be effective participants in society; and
• Provide further insight into students' understandings for future unit planning.