Topic outline
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YEAR 6 - SURFACE CHANGES
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An introduction to the Year 6 package and its links to the Australian Curriculum.
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Background information on major processes that have shaped the surface of the Earth over billions of years.
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Students examine photographs to decide of the landforms pictured were shaped by impact, volcanic, fluvial or aeolian processes. (Note: there are a few surprises in store for them!)
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In this activity students create their own impact craters and explore how different variables impact their size.
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In this PALMS Parent Power (take home activity) students are encouraged to explore meteorite impacts by dropping water balloons into a sandy patch of their garden.
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Students explore how volcanoes change shape during an eruption by creating their own erupting volcanoes.
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In this activity students examine the impact of rivers on landscapes.
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In this activity, students can sculpt their own sand dunes by using their breath or other gentle winds.
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Background information on changes in our environments, including the Lake Eyre basin.
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An investigation on how rainfall and evaporation can impact salt lakes.
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In small groups, students complete a brainstorm on human impacts that can change natural environments.
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In this activity, students are asked to research a popular natural attraction in Australia, answering some guiding questions about the place and the applicable regulations and management strategies there. Students can then make a poster promoting an environmentally-friendly tourism activity in the area they have researched.
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Students engage with poetry or stories relating to droughts and floods, or even create their own.
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In this activity, students will role play some of the members of a farming community and participate in a mock community meeting about a drought situation.
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In this demonstration students will see how different soil types respond to rainfall, possibly leading to floods in some areas.
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In this activity, students will create their own landscape, sculpting the topography, such as hills and valleys and then flood it, to observe changes.
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Students make their own simple seismometers using some basic equipment.
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Students can get an idea of how the air moves in a tropical cyclone by making and observing a simple PET bottle cyclone. Whilst it is difficult to observe air movements, the same movements occur in water, which is what this model uses.
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Students observe how cyclones interact with the ocean's surface in this simple activity.
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In this PALMS Parent Power activity students explore air pressure with the much loved egg in a bottle investigation.
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This section of the resource is designed to provide teachers with some ideas for projects or open-ended investigations for students.
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A project that is likely to spark a lot of interest and creative ideas in students is one based on the idea of an international collaborative space farm (ISF).
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Another project idea is to find out what plants and animals have been recorded living in your local area using the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and then ask students to consider how they might be impacted by surface changes and natural disasters.