Teacher Notes Australia
Big Idea - Distance
Spatial Thinking Skill – Proximity (Aura)
Scaffold Outline:
3-5: The intermediate lessons in the scaffold focus on two important ideas about distance:
1. The cost (in dollars, energy, and/or time) of overcoming distance, and
2. The importance of distance from the equator, the ocean shore, the nearest large city, and
other important geographic influences on the conditions in particular places. Those
conditions, in turn, affect the choices that people face in those places.
Resources: This folder has a sample activity about measuring distances in NYLAs. This activity is a
kind of steppingstone to using the bar scale on a map and measuring distances more accurately
with a ruler or other measuring device. Generalized distance estimates, however, may actually
provide a better foundation for constructing a mental map of the world, because the resulting
framework has less clutter and detail. In any case, familiarity with distances on a globe is a
valuable corrective for the distortions that are inevitable when someone tries to make a flat map
out of the curved surface of the earth.
An important fact about the global location of Australia: This continent is just the right distance
from the equator to be “missed” by two of the major rain-making processes of the world:
1. equatorial thunderstorms (convective rain, caused by the intense heating of the ground by
the rays of a sun that is almost directly overhead, not down at an angle), and
2. mid-latitude fronts (caused by colliding masses of cold and warm air).
Stated another way, Australia is situated at the latitude of subsiding air, which is unlikely to cause
rain or snow. As a result, most of central Australia is a desert – and even the wetter parts of the
continent have only a short rainy season.
Activities
How Many NYLAs from
Kalamazoo to Timbuktu?
Ranking the Continents by Size
Michigan Content Expectations
4 - G1.0.3: Identify and describe the characteristics and
purposes (e.g., measure distance….) of a variety of
geographic tools and technologies.
6-12: These lessons relate geographical ideas about distance with historical ideas about early human
migration, the prison colonies, the early colonial era, and the role of Australia in the modern world
economy.
Resources: The enclosed activity about Human Migration out of Africa can stand alone or be used as
either an introduction to or a summary of a longer inquiry about human migration. It is a clickable
pdf, which allows teachers to make customized versions with different backgrounds, colors, and
numbers of dates and arrows. There is no shortage of good videos and readings about genetic
markers and the human family tree (topics that occupy very different curricular positions in
different states, from general science and human biology to world history and cultures).
This folder also has three different activities to introduce the so-called von Thünen model of
location value. This important geographic theory appears quite often on the AP Human Geography
exam, and it is finding its way into a number of state assessments in earlier grades. In a nutshell,
this theory tries to explain a puzzle about human use of land – the fact that people often use the
same kind of land in different ways. They usually have good reasons for doing so, and those
reasons are related to distance from potential customers. One key is the fact that the costs of
transportation are different for different products. The activities illustrate the use of this theory to
explain crop patterns in rural areas and building patterns in urban areas.
Activities
Great Central Road
Migration
Distance and Value
Michigan Content Expectations
7 – G2.2.1: Describe the human characteristics of the region under
study.
7 – G4.3.2: Describe patterns of settlement by using historical and
modern maps.
7-G4.2.1: List and describe the advantages and disadvantages of
different technologies used to move people, products, and ideas
throughout the world.
7 – E3.1.2: Diagram or map the movement of a consumer product
from where it is manufactured to where it is sold to demonstrate the
flow of materials, labor, and capital. (also 6-E3.1.20
(HS Economics) 3.2.1: Use the concepts of absolute and
comparative advantage to explain why goods and services are
produced in one nation or locale versus another.
Capstone: Although the population and economy of Australia are both tiny by global standards, a
look at the changing role of Australia in the world economy can help students put many other global
trends of population, industry, and wealth into perspective. The big-idea presentation in this folder offers
an outline of the main story. An especially intriguing side-story involves rare earth elements – strange
substances like Dysprosium, Hafnium, Samarium, or Neodymium. Many of these high-molecular-weight
elements now play important roles in electronics, energy, and medicine. These can be good topics for
individual inquiry and capstone projects – there is plenty of good factual information on the internet.
Resources: The main resources enclosed on this CD are the Clickable Atlas and the big-idea
presentation in this folder.
Curriculum Connections
Activities
Use NYLAs to measure
distance on a globe
Rank the continents by
size and distance
Deserts: distance from the
equator
Interpret photo of Great
Central Road
Human migration dates
and distances
Make/interpret graph of
migration to Australia
Distance and land use Von Thunen mode
Compare population
maps of China, US,
Australia
Approx
Grade
Prim
Related
Class
Earth Sci
Common
Core
Math
Spatial
Reasoning
Comparison
P/E
Math
Math
Comparison
E/M
Earth Sci
R/M
Analogy
M/U
Econ
Writing
Density
M/U
History
R/M
Diffusion
M/U
History
Math
M/U
H, Econ
Math
M/U
Econ
Math /
Wr
Keywords
distance, miles, NYLA, globe,
map
continent, length, area, fit,
inside, largest, larger
latitude, satellite image, color,
desert
distance, cost of road, travel
time, emergency services
hearth, spread, distance, date,
genetic marker
Comparison source, push, immigrant,
distance, proximity
Aura, Trans distance, transport cost,
profit, graph, land value
Comparison distance within country, dot
pattern, density, desert