The referendum has been called, and interest in voting is high. For educators, the referendum is a chance to build in some real world learning experiences for students, by incorporating the referendum into their literacy, civics, numeracy or personal development teaching program. Your VCE VM, Pathways, Transition Education and Life Skills students will enjoy these easy reading referendum learning activities task cards, with research prompts, questions and activities to complete.
Use the skills
The referendum learning activities task cards are ideal for supporting real world skills in literacy and numeracy, with tasks including:
- writing sentences
- making a graph or chart
- making an infographic
- responding to a text
- writing paragraphs
- collecting data
- finding information online
- checking sources of information
- understanding disinformation
- working with digital texts
- working with images
- creating a slideshow
- making a poster
- considering alternative points of view
What's inside?
24 task cards with a range of prompts and questions
24 answer cards with suggested or model answers
What to do?
Encourage students to choose a referendum learning activity task card that interests them, or place them into pairs or small groups and share the cards amongst the group. Help students find relevant, reliable information sources to find the answers to their questions or complete the tasks. Check the answer cards to guide your own knowledge as educator, and to support students with their learning. Bring the group back together to share what they have discovered.
Top tips for teaching about the referendum
Teaching about the referendum can be a contentious topic. Some people may be concerned about teaching information which might be seen as political, and this is a valid and real concern. It's important to focus on the mechanics of voting in a referendum and the history and effect of previous referendums which have been held. Avoid providing your own point of view or talking about how you will vote. Instead, role model how you might find information from reliable sources, check for disinformation and build your own knowledge about the topic.
The task cards in this resource DO NOT contain any political information. They do not seek to persaude students to a particular viewpoint. They do not include debates, discussions or questions related to the current referendum question about an indigenous voice to parliament. Instead, the task cards include general referendum learning activities which are designed to get students thinking, learning about and developing their own ideas about why we hold referendums, what the big ideas are, how referendums have changed the Australian Constitution in the past and how to enrol to vote.
Terms of use
Please enjoy using these referendum task cards with your own students. Encourage other teachers to buy their own set. Do not sell the cards, place them in a share folder or drive or share them online.
Extend the learning
Your students will enjoy extending their learning with the Voting in Australia digital resource, including learning voting activities, elections information and easy reading text supported by visual cues.