My fist initial thoughts on HSIE
Before commencing this subject I thought I understood exactly what HSIE was about. I thought about my own experiences with HSIE in schools and unfortunately I couldn’t remember a great deal. I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing but I’m sure it was ok none the less. I then though about how I have seen HSIE taught in schools and refer to my first prac in a primary school from last semester. My teacher was fantastic and my class were a stage one class where they were looking at the topic ‘Families past and present: stories and histories. My teacher had involved the students in some really wonderful and inspiring lessons including creating personal time lines and inviting some great family and elderly guest speakers.
My favourite lesson was on my last day of prac at the school and my supervising teacher changed her classroom into an olden day 1950’s classroom. She changed the furniture to resemble an old classroom, we laid chalkboards and ink pens and bottles on each student’s desk, switched off the smart board and the computers and even my teacher and I dressed up in an old fashioned teacher’s costume. Imagine the children’s delight when my teacher and I walked out to pick up the children in assembly dressed in our olden day costumes and we marched them into two straight lines into our ‘new’ classroom. The children had a fantastic day writing their spelling and maths work on chalk boards, playing old fashioned games such as marbles and jacks and even saw what the old cane looked like.
This experience really inspired me in my HSIE teaching. The joy both my teacher and the students got from such a day in the classroom to me is worth much more than reading or looking at pictures in a book. To give the children the experience firsthand of what it might have been like to go to school in the olden days was amazing and hopefully as a teacher of HSIE in primary in the years to come I hope my HSIE lessons will be as inspiring and interesting as how my teacher made them for her students.
Ways to teach HSIE
Why is HSIE important?
HSIE is a subject where students learn across a vast number of different areas. It is a subject that allows children to gain and explore an array of areas which relate to them, their families, the community and Australia and global community as a whole. The children are learning about themselves and their county in a way which is interesting and inspiring (well I hope!). When reading through the syllabus and curriculum documents about HSIE the areas of greatest importance are that students are developing their values, attitudes and skills about a number of different topic areas that affect them both personally and globally.
One main thing HSIE teaches students is the ability to appreciate and respect other cultures, points of view, ways of livings, beliefs and so on. These are important skills students should learn and HSIE is a means for children to be able to experience and absorb new and interesting information as well as take a view point or debate their own beliefs and ideas on a number different issues. Empowering children to have these skills is important and HSIE allows students the opportunity to explore this.
What I love about HSIE is that most strands and the content within HSIE are all interrelated and students can bring their prior knowledge and experiences into this subject. These are skills that students can take with them into their high schools years as well as into their years beyond schooling. I believe all the subject and content areas in HSIE are very relevant and child friendly. Learning about the past and present of their country and heritage gives students a sense of identity and pride about themselves and their country.
The values and attitudes students learn from HSIE not only help in the understanding of the HSIE content areas but across all other KLA’s in the primary curriculum and school life in general.
Six main values and attitudes students learn about include:
Social Justice
Intercultural Understanding
Ecological Sustainability
Democratic Process
Beliefs and Moral codes
Life Long Learning
For and in depth look at these areas there is a link to the K-6 Human Society and Its Environment syllabus document.
Ways to teach HSIE
There are many ways to tech HSIE to students and a number of inquiry methods you can use in lessons with students to assist them in achieve the outcomes not only for the syllabus but for their own personal learning experiences. Reynolds (2009) states that HSIE students need to be self directed, flexible and creative as well as collaborative. They will need to have complex thinking skills, be reflective and lastly have a vision of thier role in the world (p.5). All these skills are what I hope to achieve for my students when teaching HSIE and by using the inquiry process I hope my students will become these types of learners.
After looking through the units of work document, I actually was not aware of the inquiry strategies listed in the book, but I was very happy to stumble upon them. I read through the strategies and I was happy to see the vast number of ways the learning environment could be set up to assist in the students learning as well as compliment the lesson styles. I think for teachers having a list of inquiry strategies to support student learning in HSIE is very beneficial and assists teachers in the ways or best approaches to teach HSIE.
http://k6.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/files/hsie/k6hsie_unitsofwork.pdf For an in-depth look at the strategies, read through the chapter on inquiry based learning in the Units of Work document
Inquiry in the dictionary is defined as seeking knowledge, information, or truth through questioning. Within the content strands in HSIE they are about investigating, gaining and seeking new knowledge about a topic. A large part of the HSIE curriculum is based on History and Geography so students need to learn how to search and look for information into these areas. It is not like maths where you can just work out an answer, many of the topics require students to be inquirers and investigate to find out what they know. An example of this can be seen in one of the stage two content strands: British Colonisation of Australia. This is a topic where children need to search and investigation to find out what it was like when the First Fleet arrived in Australia. Students can begin by using an inquire strategy such as brainstorming to pull together the classes ideas about what it may been like as well as brainstorm what they would like to find out. Using inquiry based learning and investigation they can find information from a variety of sources and then present these findings.
When children are using inquiry based learning they are using different methods to seek or compare information they have found. I also see the many positive benefits of inquiry based learning as involves lots of group work. I believe group work is an essential components to teaching HSIE, students are able to work together to find out information but that they are also able to bring prior knowledge and ideas to the group. Not only for this reason but students have the opportunity to discuss, debate and work through issues in the content of the HSIE curriculum.
As a last side thought, looking at this through a teacher’s eyes I know when preparing for lessons in HSIE for my classes, using inquiry based learning strategies in my lesson plans is something I endeavour to do. Exposing student to new ways of learning, participating in group work and allowing them to investigate and discover are key principals to HSIE teaching. As a teacher I would need to model the appropriate ways to engage in these inquiry strategies but I believe that you can use almost all these types of inquiry strategies even with early stage one, getting the students to become used to these methods even from kindergarten will allow students to become better equipped at becoming good inquirers not in just HSIE but these strategies can be used in all areas of the curriculum.
References:
Reynolds, R. (2009). Teaching Studies of Society Environment in the Primary School
References:
Reynolds, R. (2009). Teaching Studies of Society Environment in the Primary School
