Monday, May 12, 2025

 🧰 Curating the Past and Present: Choosing Powerful Learning Materials for HASS

📚 Why Resource Selection Matters in HASS

In the Humanities and Social Sciences, the learning materials we choose are not neutral—they shape how students understand people, places, histories, and systems. Whether it’s a political cartoon, a primary source letter, a modern news article, or a hand-carved tool, each artefact brings a perspective that either deepens understanding or risks flattening complexity.

Unlike some subjects where a single textbook might do, HASS requires diverse, multimodal resources that reflect real-world inquiry and build critical, disciplinary knowledge. Materials must support students to question, interpret, analyse, and empathise—not just remember facts.

As Parker (2020) reminds us, HASS teaching must go beyond generic “worksheets” and draw students into authentic disciplinary practices through rich, relevant materials.

 

🗂️ What Counts as a 'HASS Learning Material'?

A HASS learning material isn’t just a handout—it’s any text, artefact, image, document, or tool that helps students engage with inquiry. Effective materials:

  • Support exploration of real-world or historical contexts
  • Represent multiple perspectives and voices
  • Invite analysis and interpretation
  • Reflect the language, tools, and texts of the discipline
  • Are age-appropriate, accurate, and inclusive

This includes both primary sources (e.g., letters, maps, artefacts, oral histories) and secondary sources (e.g., textbook explanations, documentaries, websites).

 

🕵️‍♀️ Using Artefacts and Sources: Making Learning Tangible

Artefacts—both physical and digital—allow students to interact with history, geography, civics, and economics in concrete, visual, and tactile ways. They act as springboards for inference, empathy, and critical thinking.

Examples of HASS artefacts and materials:

  • History: Replica tools, immigration documents, diary entries, photographs, timelines
  • Geography: Weather maps, topographic maps, satellite imagery, land use plans, items from the natural enviornment
  • Civics: Voting ballots, campaign posters, parliamentary transcripts, protest footage
  • Economics: Product packaging, pricing data, ads from different eras, budget infographics

🧠 Tip: Artefacts don’t need to be “old”—they just need to represent a context, viewpoint, or system that students can question and analyse.

 

🧠 How to Select Effective Materials

Use the following criteria to guide your selection:

1. Authenticity

Does the material come from the real world or simulate a genuine civic, historical, geographic, or economic context? Students should feel like they’re working with the same kinds of resources professionals would use.

2. Complexity

Does it require thinking beyond the surface? Look for materials that aren’t too simple or closed-ended—those that invite interpretation, questioning, or comparison.

3. Accessibility

Is it suitable for your learners in terms of readability, cultural familiarity, and scaffolding needs? Offer visuals, vocab supports, and guiding questions where necessary.

4. Inclusivity

Does the material reflect a diversity of voices? Especially in history and civics, consider whose stories are told—and whose are left out.

5. Alignment

Does it align with curriculum goals, inquiry questions, or disciplinary skills? Always ask: What thinking will this material prompt?

 

📦 Example: Year 5 History – The Gold Rush

Topic: The impact of the gold rush on different groups in Australia.

Materials to include:

  • A newspaper excerpt from 1851 describing gold fever
  • A mining licence document (primary source)
  • A political cartoon showing Chinese miners being harassed
  • An image of a recreated goldfields town
  • An audio diary reading from a migrant family
  • An interactive map showing migration routes

Students are asked to use these artefacts to form evidence-based conclusions about:

"How fair was life on the goldfields, and for whom?"

 

🛠️ Where to Find Quality HASS Materials

Here are some excellent sources for rich, classroom-ready HASS resources:

  • Trove (National Library of Australia) – digitised newspapers, photos, letters
  • ABC Education – civics, history, and geography videos
  • National Museum of Australia – artefact images, virtual exhibits, First Nations perspectives
  • My Place for Teachers – timelines, character stories, teacher notes
  • Australian Electoral Commission – mock voting kits and civics resources
  • Geoscience Australia – downloadable maps and spatial tools
  • State libraries/museums – often have education packs and curated collections
  • Your own life/backyard - often we have our own rich artifacts students can explore or bring their own in

🧠 Pro Tip: Build your own classroom resource bank using Google Drive folders or Padlets so students can access materials easily.

 

✏️ Student Use: From Passive to Active

The goal isn’t just to show materials—it’s to have students use them to think. Try framing resource use around verbs like:

  • Compare
  • Infer
  • Evaluate
  • Sequence
  • Classify
  • Judge
  • Justify

For example:

  • “Compare two images of land use and infer how this environment has changed.”
  • “Evaluate the reliability of these two newspaper reports on a protest.”

These verbs align with both Bloom’s Taxonomy and the skills strand in the HASS curriculum.

 

🎓 Final Thoughts: Materials That Make Meaning

Powerful HASS learning happens when students explore rich, real-world materials that challenge them to think deeply. Whether it’s through a torn photo, a census sheet, or a town plan, the resources we choose shape the inquiries our students undertake and the connections they make.

Design your units like a museum exhibition—thoughtfully curated, purposefully layered, and full of stories waiting to be uncovered.

 

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