Additional Information
View the Recording Templates for this Activity (Microsoft Word, 41 KB)
Guidelines for marking
The following guidelines for marking show one approach to assigning a value to a student s work. Other approaches may be used that better suit the reporting process of the school. Categories, marks, grades, visual representations or individual comments/notations may all be useful.
| Range | A student in this range |
|
8-10 (High) |
|
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4-7 (Satisfactory) |
|
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1-3 (Progressing) |
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Feedback
The teacher will provide feedback on the Activity in writing on the worksheet. This together with oral feedback from the teacher would inform students about such things as:
- their ability to accurately communicate data as a population pyramid
- their capacity to identify and describe differences between the two pyramids
- the accuracy and depth of analysis and evaluation of the data through their ability to explain the disparities between the Indigenous community and the total Australian population based on comparing the two population pyramids.
If using peer assessment, students will be given a template, produced by the teacher, with which to assess the accuracy of their population pyramid. Using peer assessment, the evaluation of the student s analysis of the two pyramids would be completed as a discussion, in pairs, of the disparities between the Indigenous community and the total Australian population.
Future directions
This Activity leads into the use of other tools such as maps, timelines, graphs, satellite images, GIS and pie graphs to further investigate demographic characteristics, describe trends and explain how Australia's community is changing.
Students unable to accurately construct the pyramid may need some remedial work in constructing graphs while the class discussion at the end of the lesson should assist those students experiencing difficulty explaining the differences between the two population pyramids.
Where time and resources allow, additional follow-up on population pyramids can also be done with an internet lesson using the International Data Base available through the US Census Bureau:
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html
Resources
Graph paper, available at:
www.mathematicshelpcentral.com/graph_paper.htm
Population statistics for Australia, available on Education Resources page at:
A recent population pyramid for Indigenous Australia (eg figure 3.12c Kleeman, G, 1999, A Geography of Australian Environments and Communities, Reed Education, Port Melbourne.)