Humanities, Junior School

This semester Years 7 and 8 have focused on a history-based curriculum. Year 7 have developed historical skills using timelines, analysing cause and affects and continuity and change. The major assessment task was to conduct research on an artefact used by the Indigenous people of Victoria and to create a display with information that would be suitable for an exhibit in an art gallery or museum.

The Year 7s have been enthusiastically taking part in research activities and the Humanities teachers are looking forward to displaying student exhibits when complete.

Year 8 students have immersed themselves in the Middle Ages during this semester. In Term 1, they looked at the structure of medieval society, crime and punishment and values and compared these to our society in modern Australia. The students agreed that detention was a far better punishment for not submitting work at school than the whipping you would have received in the Middle Ages. Students created some WANTED posters for medieval criminals.

This term students have been studying all the gruesome details of the Black Death and observing that they too have lived through a pandemic. Students in 8G, the CEAP class manipulated data comparing two pandemics that occurred in Australia. The students produced graphs that showed the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic deaths by age group compared with 2020-2023 Covid 19 deaths by age group. They applied this skill to analysing the impact of the Black Death on population and even took part in a simulation where 60% of the class were victims of the Black Death and the survivors had to take on their workload as well as their own. Students completed an empathy-based text like a letter where they are to imagine themselves living at the time of the Black Death. Some students have created Black Death art and Venn Diagrams to show their understanding of this time.

Ms. Iuricich – Humanities Learning Leader