Lesson focus

  • Respect
  • Responsibility
  • Freedom
  • Understanding, tolerance and inclusion

Expectations and goals

  • Students to understand Australia’s core values
  • Students to describe how individuals relate to a national identity and its significance in belonging to the Australian community
  • Students to examine the ANZAC tradition

Learning experiences

Classroom Ideas

  1. Ask students to write down what they would like to learn by just looking at the title of the lesson – The Australian Nation: Who are we and what do we value? Ask them to write down what they would like to know.
  2.  Conduct a class brainstorm about national identity. Ask students to think of words that describe our nation (eg Aussie, battlers, the lucky country, prosperous nation). Hold a class discussion by posing the following questions:
    1. How do you think Australia has created and upheld its national identity?
    2. How has the Australian landscape been used to establish certain ideas about national characteristics?
    3. Do earlier ideas about Australian identity continue to be relevant today?
    4. How might individuals relate to a national identity and its significance to their sense of belonging in the Australian community?
    5. What is the key role that Crime Stoppers plays in our community? Create a logo or word art piece to display this.
  3. Ask students to think about what the core values are for all Australians. Provide them with access to the Values Venn diagram (Resource 5 below). Ask students to complete by writing their values on one side, and the values of one of their peers from a different background on the other side. Tell them to identify what values are the same and place them in the overlapping section. Ask them to explore whether these values would differ depending on a person’s age.
  4. Explain to the students that many different events have shaped Australia to be the country and society it is today. Ask students to research various events they feel have shaped the Australian identity. Provide them with access to the Events that shaped Australia worksheet (Resource 6 below) and ask them to choose at least five significant events and place them in chronological order.
  5. Ask students to examine the events that have affected changes to the understanding of the Australian national identity (eg immigration, reconciliation between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and other Australians). Note that students’ interpretations of these will vary.
  6. Australia has had many events in the past that have contributed to its identity, but none more than the ANZAC tradition.
    1. What makes the ANZAC memory a major part of our history?
    2. Has the ANZAC tradition always been embraced in our society? (Historically no women were included).
    3. What does the ANZAC tradition mean today?
    4.  What does the ANZAC tradition mean to you and your family?
  7. Display the core democratic values that were written by the Australian Citizenship Council to the class. Discuss some of these values and ask why they think that Australian’s may respect these values.
    1. To maintain the rule of law
    2. Freedom of opinion
    3. Equality
    4. Tolerant and fair society
    5.  Inclusive society
    6. Develop Australia as a commonwealth devoted to the wellbeing of its people
    7. Respect and care for the land
    8. Value the unique status of the Indigenous peoples
  8. Ask students whether these are similar to the ones they wrote in the Values Venn diagram (Resource 5 below). Provide students with access to Australian core values (Resource 7 below) and ask them to complete by researching a definition of each value and an example that they think is relevant. Discuss.
  9. Using the ‘Put yourself on the line’ strategy, ask students questions about how important they feel the following are in terms of what it means to be Australian:
    1. Honesty
    2. Truth
    3.  Friendship
    4. Trust
    5.  Inclusion
  10. Ask students to evaluate what they have learnt in the lesson. Cross check that all questions have been answered from the start of the lesson.
Home activity
  1. Provide students with access to the Important values survey (Resource 8 below). Ask them to complete the survey before the next lesson for class discussion.

Lesson focus questions

  1. What are the core values for all Australians?
  2. How are ideas about Australia’s national identity created and sustained?
  3. How do you think Australia has created and upheld our national identity?
  4. How has the Australian landscape been used to establish certain ideas about national characteristics?
  5. Do earlier ideas about Australian identity continue to be relevant today?
  6. How might individuals relate to a national identity and its significance to their sense of belonging in the Australian community?
  7. What events in the past have shaped our nation?
  8. As a class discuss values we uphold. Do these differ from us as a nation?
  9. How has the ANZAC tradition changed our view on war?
  10. What makes the ANZAC memory a major part of our history?
  11. What does the ANZAC tradition mean today?
  12. What does the ANZAC tradition mean to you and your family?
  13. Has the ANZAC tradition always been inclusive in our society? (Historically no women were included)

Assessment tasks

Students to:

  1. Complete Australian core values (Resource 7 below)
  2. Construct a letter to their local parliamentary member explaining the importance of the Australian core values and what and how they and their school are doing to promote them

Download resources and tools

Printable lesson plan ( Download Year 8, Lesson 2 plan)

Resource 5: Values Venn diagram [Download Resource 5]

Resource 6: Events that shaped Australia [Download Resource 6]

Resource 7: Australian core values [Download Resource 7]

Resource 8: Important values survey [Download Resource 8]