The Snapshots of Asia Website includes:
- teacher information
- student activities
- resources.
The activities for students are, for the most part, designed to be used on screen. By selecting appropriate choices, students are able to progress through a sequence of activities designed to complement the "Snapshots of Asia" books.
Students choose the country they wish to explore by clicking on the appropriate country on the map of Asia, the opening student screen. There are six countries which correspond to Snapshots of Asia: China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.
The activities have been developed for students working as individuals or in groups. This will depend on the availability of computers with Internet access and the classroom set-up. In all activities, students should be encouraged to discuss the questions and answers with their peers.
All pages may be printed. Use the web browser print function. The quality of the print-out will be dependent on the printer. It may be necessary to alter the page set-up from 100% to ensure that all of the page will be printed.
Three handouts have been provided as Black Line Masters for each country. They are available as PDF files from this website. To open these PDF files you will require Acrobat Reader which is available free of charge from Adobe.
Navigating through the student activities
The opening screen presents a map of Asia with the six countries presented in the Snapshots of Asia books highlighted. Students should click on the country of their choice. If they have chosen the incorrect country, they should then go back to the map by clicking on the Back button on their web browser.
There are no external links to other websites in this section. Students move through the website by answering the questions. An outline of the activities is presented below.
Section | Activity | Comment | Curriculum relevance |
Introduction | Map of Asia | Students select the country they have been studying. | SOSE |
| | Introducing the character | Students are introduced to the character from the book. | |
| | Flags | Students choose the correct colours of the flag of their chosen country. | SOSE |
Word recognition | Repetitive rhymes | A reading exercise in which students identify words from pictures. Students finish the activity by typing their own name. They may want to print this screen. | English |
Graphing | Most popular choices | Students choose among activities, sports and forms of transport and compare their choice to others. This data is presented as a bar graph. They may want to print this screen. A student handout accompanies this activity. | Maths |
Quiz | Fact file quiz | Students work their way through an online quiz. A student handout accompanies this activity. | SOSE |
| | Finish | At the end of the fact file quiz, a finish screen will appear which allows students to return to the map of Asia. A student handout accompanies this screen. | SOSE |
Teacher Activity Sheets - General
Map of Asia
This map can be used for the new and original Snapshots books to locate and label different countries and view them in the context of Asia. It can be copied onto an overhead transparency and projected as an enlarged version to be used in front of the class.
Graphing Activity
Collect the heights of the tallest mountains in India, Malaysia and the Philippines from the Snapshots books. Graph the heights next to each other as a bar graph to show their differences. Alternatively, represent each mountain on a graph paper using a triangle with a base as wide as its height. The students can then cut out the triangles and lay them over each other with biggest at the back and the smallest at the front to see their differences in height.
Videos
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Julia Gillard, May 2009
The Hon Julia Gillard MP speaks for the Asia Literacy for Every Young Australian National Summit, 4–5 May 2009
Video: 6:30
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Tim Harcourt, Austrade
'We can bring trade barriers down but if we don’t have cultural engagement in the neighbourhood we are not going take advantage of those benefits.'
Video: 23:12
