SOCIAL STUDIES Years 7 – 10 social studies could be considered the heart of the Social Sciences Faculty. It is where Diocesan students develop their first understandings about societies and begin to shape their own views. To help students prepare for the future, social studies uses action learning where students solve real-world problems.
Know the past, understand the present, lead the future The challenges of the 21st century are substantial in scale, scope and pace. Our students face a future in which existing jobs are affected by technology, where climate change will be of critical concern, and social media influences politics and economics as well as the way people interact. The Social Sciences Faculty is creating learning opportunities aimed at giving our students the confidence to rise to these challenges with curiosity and courage. The STEM skills are vital for the increasingly technological world our students will graduate into. It is also important that our students develop the soft skills. In 2013, Google determined that the seven characteristics of their most successful employees are the very skills that include communicating and listening well, understanding different values and perspectives, having empathy, as well as being a critical thinker and problem solver.
In the Year 9 Business World topic, students have an opportunity to develop their financial capabilities by establishing their own business and to design, develop, market and sell their own products at our market day. They also participate in a physical simulation game called ‘Hunter Gatherer’. Students ‘hunt’ one another down while running around the hockey turf and ‘gather’ one another’s resources, challenging them to think about economic differences. Our Year 7 students are challenged to develop sustainability solutions in the Food Challenges topic by monitoring food wasted at home and cooking meals using household food items that were to go in the rubbish. Our families were able to enjoy soups, smoothies and, surprisingly enough, even enjoyed those meals centred around toast! In Term 2 our Year 9 students work in teams to monitor and evaluate waste at Dio and compete to develop a plan on how we can improve our environment by reducing, reusing and recycling.
Learning in the social sciences is about engaging students in the past, present and future to develop what we call ‘the seven Cs’: curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, comprehension, communication, collaboration and caring. The subjects within the faculty – accounting, business studies, classical studies, economics, geography, history, social studies and tourism – draw on a common goal, which is to ensure our students become confident, empathetic and ethical global citizens.
Year 8 social studies students making PlayDoh models representing unique features of the New Zealand environment.
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