13 June 2018
Notice 005/18
Amendments have been made to the Geography General Senior Syllabus 2019.
Summative internal assessment 1: Examination — combination response
The specifications and conditions of the task have been amended to ensure clarity and consistency across the syllabus.
The instrument-specific marking guide for Part A — Comprehending has been amended to better describe evidence required.
Summative internal assessment 2: Investigation — field report
The instrument-specific marking guide has been amended for Explaining and Comprehending and for Synthesising to better describe evidence required.
Summative internal assessment 3: Investigation — data report
The instrument-specific marking guide has been amended for Explaining and Comprehending and for Synthesising to better describe evidence required.
Syllabus objectives
Syllabus objective 2: comprehend geographical patterns has been amended to remove ‘temporal’ from the objective explanation. This change is carried through to unit objectives, subject matter, assessment objectives and the instrument-specific marking guides.
Assessment guidance
Unit 1 and Unit 2 guidance has been amended to support schools, especially those that may decide to implement a concurrent delivery model.
Subject matter
Subject matter has been modified as follows:
- Alignment of subject matter to cognitions and clarification of cognitive verbs across Unit 1, Unit 2 and Unit 3
- Teaching and learning: Subject matter (Section 1.2.5) — minor amendment to coverage of geographical skills to better align skills to subject matter
- Unit 1 Topic 1: Natural hazard zones — ‘including’ replaced with ‘such as’; ‘disaster’ terminology replaced with ‘hazard’
- Unit 1 Topic 2: Ecological hazard zones — ‘including’ replaced with ‘such as’
- Unit 2 Topic 2: Managing challenges facing a megacity — ‘country’ replaced with ‘city’ to allow for local scale
- Unit 3 Topic 1: Local cover transformations and climate change — ‘including’ replaced with ‘such as’; ‘and modelling’ included to reflect required processes; ‘vulnerability of communities’ removed from ‘analyse’ cognition, as it is not an indicator of climate change, but an impact of climate change
- Unit 3 Topic 2: Responding to local land cover transformations — ‘the geographic inquiry model’ replaced with ‘an inquiry approach’ to reflect inquiry approach
- Unit 4 Topic 1: Population challenges in Australia — ‘regional’ included in ‘conduct’ cognition to include appropriate scale of study; ‘spatial technologies’ removed from subject matter related to assessment
- Unit 4 Topic 2: Global population change — subject matter amended to better represent the requirements of the objectives; ‘geographic processes’ replaced with ‘demographic processes’; more examples included in subject matter.
The Geography General Senior Syllabus 2019 (v1.1) and associated resources are available in the QCAA Portal. The syllabus is also available on the QCAA website.
More information
Joanne Gordon, Learning Area Manager (Humanities and Social Sciences)
Brad Blashak, Learning Area Manager (Humanities and Social Sciences)
Email: HASS@qcaa.qld.edu.au
Telephone: (07) 3864 0248
- Last reviewed:
- 25 July 2018
- Last updated:
- 13 June 2018
