Australian citizenship Defining Moments

This learning module provides resources and classroom activities for teachers to use in their Australian Curriculum: Civics and Citizenship Year 6 classrooms.

It supports the Civics and Citizenship knowledge and understanding requirements for aspects of citizenship, and diversity and identity:

• What does it mean to be an Australian citizen?

It does this by providing a way for students to explore the shared values of Australian citizenship and the formal rights and responsibilities of Australian citizens in a way that is engaging and interactive.

The investigation provides a rich digital resource for classroom use. It includes contextual information, documents, images, scaffolded comprehension, analytical and extension questions, and individual, group and class activities. Using these materials and activities, students can explore aspects of the Year 6 knowledge and skills outcomes specified in the Australian Curriculum — Civics and Citizenship.

The learning module has been designed to draw on the National Museum of Australia’s Defining Moments in Australian History, together with some supplementary resources. Students do not need to visit that site to complete this learning module as the featured Defining Moments information used is available on this site.

The learning module contains:

• Introductory activity

Students complete this introductory activity to help them consider the meaning of citizenship. It helps to raise the legal and moral concepts that are explored in Investigation 1.

• Investigations 1.1–1.3

Students explore aspects of citizenship. They find that citizenship is both a legal status and a way of behaving. They see that the postwar change from ‘British subject’ to ‘Australian citizen’ also involved a change in attitudes towards what citizenship involved — from an initial emphasis on fealty or loyalty to the monarch, to much more of an emphasis on the nation, its people and its basic beliefs.

At the end of the module students will be asked to reflect on their knowledge and discuss what they have learned, by formulating questions for a citizenship test. Teachers could collate these ideas and run their own class quiz, using student-generated questions.

Teachers may want to discuss the idea of a ‘citizenship affirmation’ element into existing ceremonies that proclaim aspects of Australian citizenship today, such as Anzac Day and Harmony Day. Note that a discussion of the citizenship pledge or affirmation could also lead to looking at other symbols of Australian identity, including flags, the national anthem and the coat of arms — see the Defining Moment in Australian history 1954 A national symbol — Flag Act becomes law, defining the official flag of Australia and the Extra resource Symbols of Australia.

• Bringing it together

Students reflect on the rights and responsibilities of Australian citizenship and what they consider to be the most important aspect of being an Australian citizen.

The Defining Moments that are relevant to the different inquiry questions in the curriculum are:

Longer versions of the Defining Moments are available on the National Museum of Australia website. 

Knowledge and understanding

• What does it mean to be an Australian citizen? (ACHASSK147)

Inquiry and skills

Students will have exercised a number of these learning skills:

Questioning

• Develop appropriate questions to guide an inquiry about people, events, developments, places, systems and challenges (ACHASSI094)

Researching

• Locate and collect relevant information and data from primary sources and secondary sources (ACHASSI095)

Analysing

• Examine primary sources and secondary sources to determine their origin and purpose (ACHASSI098)
• Examine different viewpoints on actions, events, issues and phenomena in the past and present (ACHASSI099)

Evaluating and reflecting

• Evaluate evidence to draw conclusions (ACHASSI101)
• Work in groups to generate responses to issues and challenges (ACHASSI102)
• Reflect on learning to propose personal and/or collective action in response to an issue or challenge, and predict the probable effects (ACHASSI104)

Interdisciplinary thinking

Students will have engaged with several of the concepts of:

• significance
• continuity and change
• cause and effect
• place and space
• interconnections
• roles, rights and responsibilities
• perspectives and action.

Cross-curriculum priorities

Students will have been involved in additional learning about some aspects of:

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies
• Asia and the Pacific
• sustainability.

 _{Source: The Australian Curriculum Humanities and Social Sciences, v8.3, December 2016, accessed 1 February 2019} 

All case studies in the learning module have been designed to help students develop a number of the knowledge and skills outcomes specified in Australian Curriculum — Civics and Citizenship. At the end of each section teachers could use this matrix to help guide student discussion about what they have achieved. The matrix is suitable to be used from Years 5–10, but with teachers guiding the discussion as appropriate to the particular class. It could also be used for assessment purposes.

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