This six-lesson sequence presents the Big History – a summary of how humanity began from the first humans 8 million years ago until the first Australians 65,000 years ago. This unit focuses on a pivotal moment in human prehistory – when we left Africa in big numbers to colonise the world. Think of this unit as setting the stage on which the incredible drama of human history will play out for your students.
This unit has two major goals: first, introduce students to historical skills and concepts; and second, provide them with a fascinating and memorable story of the earliest humans, focusing on the first Australians.
What is in this unit?
This unit focuses on the enquiry: How did humans take over the world?
This enquiry is broken down into four topic questions around which the lessons are organised: 1) When did human dominance begin? 2) What did early human migration look like? 3) How do we know about the prehistoric past? 4) What impact did early humans have on their environments?
Each lesson prioritises historical knowledge, introducing historical enquiry skills through the content, and these skills are then broken down into small chunks to make sure students do not get lost or feel overwhelmed.
Aligned to the Australian Curriculum
This sequence of six lessons is aligned to the Australian Curriculum version 9.0. This sequence will also work if you are still using the old version of the curriculum.
Our Unit Guide has a larger table for both versions of the curriculum with checkmarks to note where each lesson is aligned.
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