The social sciences faculty is committed to opening the minds of its students to the world around them and the provision of quality teaching and interactive learning experiences which will enable students to become life long learners and critical thinkers with a developed environmental consciousness.
The faculty offers courses introducing students to geographical and environmental issues, civics and citizenship as well as social education. We believe our students will be the leaders of the future. This will be both challenging and exciting. Opportunities exist for all students to achieve their potential through a range of subjects and activities. Our subjects and courses are designed to encourage students to think about the world in new and different ways and enable them to develop and appreciation of the physical, social and cultural aspects of society.
The subjects offered in social sciences equip students to learn a variety of skills including:
- the ability to question and make judgements
- the ability to conduct research in order to synthesise and analyse information
- an opportunity to learn skills which benefit students in real-world situations.
Students undertaking courses in social sciences are provided with a range of opportunities to experience course content in the real world. Students are able to participate in field work activities, school excursions, academic competitions such as Mock Trial, World Water Day and the Australian Geography Competition.
Geography is mandatory from Kindergarten to Year 10, where students study specific geographical concepts and skills. Students also have an opportunity to learn more about people and the societies and environments in which they live through elective subjects.
Courses
Stage 4 (Years 7 and 8)
- mandatory geography
Stage 5 (Years 9 and 10)
- mandatory geography
- elective geography
- commerce
- international studies
Stage 6 (Years 11 and 12)
- business studies
- economics
- geography
- legal studies
Faculty focus areas
The social sciences faculty is a exciting faculty dedicated to providing a rich variety of quality teaching and learning practices across a range of subject areas. The faculty aims to:
- Continuous development and refinement of teaching and learning programs embedding literacy and numeracy strategy as part of regular and focused learning.
- Develop independent and critical thinking.
- Develop stimulating and collaborative learning environments for both staff and students.
- Encourage high order thinking and research skills.
- Foster an attitude of life long learning.
- Integrate numeracy, literacy and ICT skills into quality teaching practices and programs.
- Provide active student engagement in all learning.
- Provide guidance and support for all students' range of learning needs.
- Provide students with the opportunity to gain important employability skills.
Our strategies
- Implementation of the new NESA syllabus in geography incorporating the National Curriculum.
- Collaborative planning and whole faculty activities to address student learning and engagement.
- Collaborative sharing of programs and teaching resources across the faculty.
- Differentiative approaches to teaching and learning including address the needs of different learners through tactile, visual and written learning approaches.
- Provide learning activities which contextualise classroom content into real world situations
- Create engaging learning environments for all types of learners.
- Experiment with a variety of student based activities to increase student engagement.
- Exploring ways to embed technology into teaching and learning programs to enhance student engagement and learning.
- Develop ways to embed on-line learning in Stage 4 and Stage 5
- Revise and refine assessment practice as evidence of learning through a range of meaningful and realistic assessment methods that focus on assessment for, assessment as and assessment of learning.