Year 8 Exemplars: Overview

Curriculum overview

The themes for Year 8 are: Landforms and landscapes and Changing nations.

We will all depend on the future use of environments. For example, we all live in places which are an amalgam of landforms and landscapes. These environments also impact on the location, type and features of settlements. The way our landforms and landscapes are described and depicted also impacts on our views and perceptions.

The ideas associated with these Year 8 themes are investigated in Australia and China using a variety of approaches.
The concept of change over time is central. It significantly enhances an understanding of the two basic branches of geography - environmental and human. The concept should be further developed when this understanding has been well established.

About the illustrations

Illustration 1: Landscape and landforms of Wilson's Promontory provides students with an opportunity to study the landscape and landform features of Wilson's Promontory, and factors involved in the creation of these landscapes, both physical and human-induced. A PowerPoint presentation directs students' learning to a region of Australia with which they may not be familiar.

Illustration 2: An urban myth focuses on the question of why so many Australians live in so few cities. There is an introductory investigation of world patterns of population and urban concentrations, which contextualises Australia as a highly urbanised country. It then accounts for this distribution before undertaking a comparative study of the population distributions of Australia and the United States of America.

Illustration 3: Representations of landscapes in Australian art focuses on the ways in which painters have portrayed the Australian landscape at different times. It enables students to develop their understanding of the aesthetic value of landscapes and how the portrayal of Australian landscapes has changed over time.

Illustration 4: Migration within China guides students to explore the disparity between rural and urban living standards as a driver for one of the largest population movements in recent world history. It also explores the issues associated with the location of minorities in China and in particular the government-sponsored Han migration into Xinjiang Province.