From Geography teacher, Brad Thompson
Last week, the entire Year 9 cohort were treated to presentations by three very varied guest speakers as part of an ‘incursion’ held to launch one of the first Geography Department projects aligned with the new NSW Syllabus/ Australian Curriculum.
This new unit of work, called “Changing Places” also marks the introduction of Project Based Learning in the Geography Department, in which students engage with real world issues by playing roles within a large group project.
This unit deals with concepts of migration and urbanisation and the speakers shared their real-life experiences in the field as well as presenting facts and statistics. Mrs Ashley Fell, a demographer from McCrindle Research; Mr John McQuaid a migration advisor from Arrive Australia and Mrs Tjandra Hsu, an established immigrant living in Sydney each spoke to the boys.
Students will now role-play the parts of demographers, migration advisors, established migrants and urban/town planners as they work in teams to research and analyse information and create journals, reports and videos looking at migration from Asia to different parts of Australia.
As part of the multi-faceted event, College staff also screened videos and google tours, and introduced the overall structure of the project to the cohort during the session. The students were engaged and interested throughout the presentations and asked thoughtful questions in a Q & A session. They were a credit to the College throughout the incursion.
