Tauranga Boys’ College

11 Social Studies

Course Description

Teacher in Charge: Tim Clarke.

Prerequisites

Open Entry

The NEW Social Studies Level One course will allow students to have a taste of all the main subjects we offer in the Humanities Curriculum Area – Geography, History and Psychology. All three of those subjects will be available as a Level Two option if students decide to take Level One Social Studies. Each term will have a subject focus followed by an assessment based on that subject’s key topic.

The key learning outcomes will be to develop literacy and researching skills throughout the year, so our students are competent with their literacy ability as they head in to NCEA Level Two.

The course will aim to provide students with wider timeframes to develop meaningful pieces of work with the emphasis being on creating quality work rather than rushed work to meet deadlines.

The key topics and their assessments weighting are listed below:

Geography (10%) – Natural Disasters and Skills

Psychology (20%) – Psychology Approaches

History – (20%) – Rise of Adolf Hitler and World War Two

Research Project (50%) – A chosen topic to research, Create a presentation as well as a written essay/report on that topic.

Course Overview

Term 1
Term 1 will begin with an introduction to the year and have a key focus on the literacy and researching skills needed for this subject.

Geography Skills: - The term will then turn into a Geography focus and will investigate the causes and effects of different Natural Disasters. The first assessment will be a geography skills focus based on formations of a chosen Natural Disaster.

Term 2
An introduction to Psychology – This term will focus on 'What is Psychology?' and what are the different approaches used in Psychology. We will specifically focus on the approaches of Behavourism, Psychodynamic Theory and Biological Psychology.

The topics that will be attached to these approaches are Causes of Addiction, Consequences of Young Fame, Sports Psychology and ‘Can you be born a serial killer?‘. The assessment will focus on a chosen approach that will be researched and then explained for a specific type of human behaviour.

Term 3
History Film Study – The class will choose a film that is based on true events and complete an analysis report of the 'Real Event' versus 'The Film'.

The film will be relevant to the topic of World War II as this is the main topic for the whole term. We will explore the key moments such as - The Rise of Hitler, The Holocaust, Key Battles of WWII, The New World – Post WWII.

Term 4
The end of Term 3 and Term 4 will focus on a choice of the three main topics of the year and the students will complete a research project, followed by a written report/essay to complete their final assessment for the year. The project and report will have a 50% weighting of their overall year’s marks.
Assessment:
Part 1 - Research Project (25%) – Topic of Choice, created on Google Slides.
Part 2 - Written Essay/Report (25%) – Report based on your research project topic. Typed on Google Docs.

Learning Areas:

Humanities

Assessment Information

Paper	Description	Type	Weighting
Paper 11SST1	Natural Hazards	Internal	10.00%
Paper 11SST2	Approaches to explaining behaviour	Internal	20.00%
Paper 11SST3	Film study	Internal	20.00%
Paper 11SST4	Research project and report	Internal	50.00%

This course is designed to help students that want to pursue an academic career but may struggle with the level of literacy skills needed to achieve that goal. This course will specifically help to improve literacy levels of the students to allow them to further explore their academic options as they move forward with their education. Each subject area can lead on to many different and meaningful careers and will provide a fantastic base for any students pathway through education.