Humanities, Science, Arts and English Resources

The Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne has lessons for Years 9 and 10 which focus on Australia’s global peacekeeping activities since World War II. Teachers’ manual and classroom resources are available from: http://www.shrine.org.au/content.asp?Document_ID=1

The Racism. No Way site offers:

  • a science lesson plan Good Heavens where students look at the history of science to identify some of the scientific ideas that different cultures have contributed to science throughout history, to describe, using examples, ideas developed by different cultures to explain the world around them, to explore some models and theories that have been considered in science and then modified or rejected as a result of available evidence and discuss examples where societal, religious or ethical values have had an impact on scientific developments.  Use this link to reach the site http://www.racismnoway.com.au  then search for the link to the lesson plan using 20031027.
  • a lesson plan called Let's Look at Groups.  This is an English or Health and Physical Education lesson that involves students identifying the many groups to which they belong and to consider how groups are formed, group dynamics and how group rules influence individual choice.  Students will develop strategies that might influence their groups.   For this lesson plan, search the Racism. No Way site using 20020621.
  • an English or Humanities lesson plan called Racist Behaviour.  Students work with definitions of racism, discuss the meaning of racism and its forms and effects.  This lesson plan will be found by searching using 20010512.

The Council on Islamic Education is an American site that offers a range of resources for teachers including comprehensive and free lesson plans including -

The Asia Society AskAsia.org website (http://www.askasia.org/) an educational site concerning the some 30 countries that comprise 'Asia' today.  The site is full of inspiring ideas for lesson plans that would work well for other areas with minimal adjustment.   For instance, this link:

http://www.askasia.org/teachers/lessons/plan.php?no=72&era=&grade=04&geo=

will take you to a lesson plan where students curate an exhibition based on a theme and using on-line collections of artwork such as the Islamic collection held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (for the collection see website http://www.metmuseum.org/Works_Of_Art/department.asp?dep=14) .  

Add this to my collection

Year 11 and 12 International Studies Resources

Although the methodology outlined below was employed in a Year 11/Year 12 class to tackle the topic of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it could be modified for other year levels and other subjects.

TEACHER: The subject that I did teach was International Studies and that was highly successful… we had 100% retention rate… And I think the reason for its success is in that format we were able to directly tackle…the Middle East, we did the Arab-Israel conflict…what we did is start with the present, and some of them had so much prejudice, no knowledge, lots of prejudice and lots of anger.. I felt terrified when I started. Everyone in the staffroom here said “Jeez you’re mad, you are so mad, you know, you are so mad…” And the first lesson we just filled the whiteboard with all racist insults... We called them this, we called them that, and they filled the board and I said “Gee isn’t that interesting because [that is] the way the Jews were seen, and they were persecuted, and look what happened in the Holocaust…” And then we analysed what the prejudice was, and it was all on… none of it was individual-based, it was all on, they were saying things like, oh they’re really greedy for money, and they’ve got little eyes, and they look like rats, and all these sorts of things. And you look at them and say, what’s the basis of this hatred, such intense hatred. Is it your hatred, or is it your parents’ hatred…. What’s the basis of prejudice, really? It’s a basis of how they’re perceived. And we did look at the whole thing of the scarf and how people perceive the scarf [racism against Muslims]… And I think they slowly… They got a real buzz out of working backwards because in International Studies, what you do is you look at the present and you go back… I had lots of times when I thought, what have I done? But, in the end, when they got such a buzz out of being able to pick up a newspaper and to understand what was going on, and I think there was a bit of empathy…

TEACHER: … at the beginning… Student X was so upset with me… “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t know anything, you don’t know what it’s really like! I’ve been there, I’ve seen the Israelis…” Anyway, it was lots of abuse. At the end of it, in the exam, she wrote, “You have taught this really well and I’ve really learnt a lot.”

 

 


Add this to my collection