One place. One summer. A guide a stranger could actually use.
A Guide to Somewhere is an end-of-year project to send home for the summer holidays, for students aged about 12 to 16 (Years 7 to 10). They pick a local place, a park, a creek, a street or a beach, and keep going back. Over six weeks they observe it, find out what lives there and what happened there, measure and map it, then make a real guide for a real reader, test it and fix it. They bring it back to school in Term 1.
There's nothing to mark over the break, and it's written for teenagers, not for a classroom.
THE SIX WEEKS
- Pick a place, and go and look
- What lives here
- What happened here: Country, then and now, and an interview
- Measure it: area, a scale map and data over time
- Make the guide
- Test it on a real reader and fix it
About two to three hours a week, with one or two visits. The plan leaves room for Christmas and New Year, and for time away.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
- 28-page student booklet on A4, ready to print as a folded A5 booklet (plus a printer-friendly version and single pages)
- 4-page parent pack for families: the first week, a six-week holiday plan with a due-back date you fill in, a tracker for the fridge, summer safety notes (heat, storms, snakes and swimming between the flags), a check-in question for each part and a lighter 10-hour route
- A finished example guide, so students can see what good looks like
- The companion app for phone, tablet or computer: a visit log, photos, voice typing in browsers that support it (needs internet) and a printable record of everything they did, to bring back to school
- A Start Here sheet for you: how to send it home and what to ask for when it comes back
WHAT YOU NEED
The PDFs work on their own: print them or share them. The app is optional. It's a website at starclassacademy.com/somewhere, opened with the code in your download, and it needs a current browser and internet the first time, then works offline. An offline copy of the app is also in the download. Work in the app is saved only on the student's device, never on our servers.
CURRICULUM
Linked to the Australian Curriculum v9 for Years 7 to 10: English, Science, HASS (History and Geography) and Mathematics. The parent pack has a short note for teachers.
LICENCE: One licence per teacher: copy the booklet and parent pack for the students in your own classes, and share the app code with their families. Other teachers need their own licence. You may put these files on a password-protected or school-internal site (such as your school's learning platform) for your own classes. Please don't post them on a public website or share them outside your classes.
