A possum disturbs Old Dog, and a ‘cranky’ magpie swoops at anyone who steps into the backyard. Little J and Big Cuz share a room and when Little J steps on Big Cuz’s art project, a disagreement over territory ensues. The result is a clear dividing line to mark their individual territory. But they discover they have to compromise on a shared space, and cooperate in order to move in and out of the room, and to get past the swooping magpie in the backyard. Their joint, inventive solution wins high praise from the class at ‘show & tell’.

Elaborate - Present narratives, information and findings in oral, graphic and written forms using simple terms to denote the passing of time and to describe direction and location.

Theme - MAPS

After viewing Little J & Big Cuz, Episode 12 ‘Territories’, engage students with the following activities to support their understanding about place, maps and boundaries.

Digital (or non-digital) postcards

Set students a task to design a set of eight digital postcards; one from each state and territory in Australia. Refer to:

• What is a postcard?
• The Social History of Postcards in Beverly (uses of postcards)

Divide the class into groups of eight students. Each student in each group is responsible for designing one digital (or non-digital) post card with image and text information about the place they are sending the postcard from. It could be the place the students were born, holidayed at, or a place of interest to them.

Students should access these websites:

• National Base Map with External Territories
• AIATSIS Map of Indigenous Australia

Using the search function of the National Base Map with External territories, have students find the location of the town/area that a student is visiting and send a postcard to a friend in their class from that location.

On one side of the card, the students should import an image of the town/area and title it, and (if possible) enter the coordinates of the place. The image can be sourced from the internet or a screen shot of the map where the town/area is located.

On the other side of the post card, students should enter the following information, either in narrative form or as dot points:

• Name of the town/area
• Add a compass as orientation for where the town/are is located, highlighting if it is located in the western area of Australia, or northern, etc.
• Name of the state and region
• Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander language group
• A short description of the landscape that would be visible at the location, e.g. ‘hot and dry near the desert’, ‘hot and humid near the rainforest’, ‘cold, wet, and mountainous’.
• Names of some of the animals/birds/fish, etc. that are prevalent in the area.

Once complete, re-organise the class into state and territory groups and have these students draw a state map, labelling each of the towns where they sent their postcards from. Collectively, they should pool information about the state, and present it to the rest of the class as a study of what the state has to offer people who want to visit.

Once all the state maps are completed, tape the states into a full map of Australia for display in the classroom. Display the post cards around the edges of the map.

Suggested resources:

• Postcards app, Australia Post
• Digital Postcards