I have found the ability of children (and adults) to visualise their own country is often tenuous. What are your experiences with this?
Their are many aspects to this, for example: Areas of States (see Maths300 lesson 50 – “Country Maps”), distance between towns and cities, different climate (Maths300 lesson 83 – “Temperature Graphs”), etc.
Their is a big overlap here with Mathematics and Geography, making this a very obvious opportunity for cross curriculum teaching.
Last week I was giving a trivia quiz and the following question arose:
“In population, what is Australia’s largest inland city”?
None of my students knew the answer, but what was worse, they named many coastal cities such as Brisbane and Melbourne!
Should teachers be including more content in their lessons about Australia? eg. Penrose tilings at Federation Square, Melbourne; geometry of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, etc.
