Dear Year 3
parents/cares,
I hope you and
your child spent a wonderful holiday and I am writing to share with you what we
will learn in this term in Humanities and Social Sciences learning area. This term’s
topic is Civics and Citizenship and our focus will be democracy. The Australian
Curriculum demonstrates that the students should be able to present their ideas
and express their point of view about the issue and problems in various forms,
and also be able to make decisions democratically and participate in and
contribute to their community. In order to achieve these learning outcomes, I have
designed a series of activities.
Firstly, I am
planning to hold a classroom meeting to elect the leader of the class. Undoubtedly,
every student has the right to elect, so I will ask every student to prepare their
electing speech about why they want to be the leader, what their strengths are
and what they will do if they were the leader. The process of preparing speech
integrates to the literacy skills very well. After everyone has their say, I
will ask the children to vote three persons which they think could be a good
leader. Then I will use tally marks to record the number of each student’ votes
on the whiteboard, which integrated to mathematics learning area. By doing so,
the students could understand how important their opinions are and what they
say can make a difference. From the Enrolment
Statistics by Australian Electoral Commission at 31 December 2018, there are
16,855,289 Australians eligible to be enrolled to vote, but 632,953 people are
missing from the electoral roll. What an incredible number! I hope our children
could take their right and responsibility to vote in the future after learning through
the classroom activity.
Secondly, the leader will work with the rest of the class to
make classroom rules and consequences so that the children could understand why
rules are important and what will happen if the rules are broken. It enables the
students to become better citizens in their community and future life. On the
other hand, Clifford H. Edwards believes that providing students freedom and
power on classroom issues could eliminate some of the most significant student behavioural
problems.
Moreover, the students could
apply internet and technology to investigate how government works and what they
can do to contribute to their community. There is a wonderful website https://www.peo.gov.au (Parliamentary Education Office) that students can use
to assist their learning. Especially the ‘Kidsview’ includes a lot of different
forms of resources tailored to children which is fun and practical. It will
promote the students’ critical and creative thinking through doing the
activities.
Furthermore,
I am thinking to take the children to visit local council sometime. This provides
the children opportunity to witness how a local government works in real life
and how they deal with some social issues. After the tour, we can have a
classroom debate on some community issue or even some school problems which
could enhance their problem-solving skills. More importantly, they will learn
to express their thoughts clearly and firmly and comment on other people’s
opinions in a nice and respectful way. Meanwhile, paying attention to the
community and school issues could cultivate the children’s sense of
responsibility.
These
are some main activities we will do in this term, I will definitely update any
new information. At the same time, I hope you can support your child’s learning,
for example, give them some suggestions of speech preparation, discuss some
community or social issue with your child, and share your opinions. Also, if
you have time and would like to come along to visit the local council with your
child, you are more than welcome. Let’s collaborate with each other to help our
children become good citizen.
References
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting
Authority ([ACARA], 2016). Australian Curriculum. Retrieved form https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/humanities-and-social-sciences/hass/
Australian Electoral
Commission ([AEC], 2019). Enrolment statistics. Retrieved from
https://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Enrolment_stats/index.htm
Edwards, C. H. (2008). Classroom discipline and management (5th
ed.). Milton, Qld: John Wiley.
Parliamentary Education Office [PEO]. (2017). Retrieved
from https://www.peo.gov.au/
