NSW Stage 1 HSIE: Connections to People & Places (Years 1-2)

NSW Stage 1 HSIE: Teaching Connections to People and Places

In the NSW K-6 HSIE syllabus, Stage 1 (Years 1 and 2) is the moment students start moving beyond their immediate family and school to ask bigger questions about their place in the wider world. The Connections to People and Places strand — typically taught across Term 2, with each school choosing whether the unit lands in their Year A or Year B — is one of the most engaging units in the early-primary HSIE program when it's taught well, and one of the easiest to drift into worksheet-heavy delivery when planning time runs short.

This guide is for Year 1 and 2 teachers who want a clear picture of what the unit involves, where it fits across the two-year HSIE cycle, and how to find ready-made teacher resources without rebuilding the whole unit from scratch.

What the Connections to People and Places unit covers

The Stage 1 HSIE History strand alternates between two major units across a two-year cycle:

• Year A: Present and Past Family Life — students compare their own family life to that of family members from earlier generations, exploring continuity and change through photographs, stories, and simple historical sources.
• Year B: The Past in the Present — students investigate local-area history, technological change, and historical sites within walking distance of school.

Alongside the History units, Stage 1 HSIE Geography also runs across two-year cycles. The Geography units develop students' understanding of:

• Year A: Features of Places — natural and human features, weather and seasons, caring for places.
• Year B: People and Places — Australia's location, connections to places further afield, Aboriginal connections to Country, accessibility, and how spaces are used differently.

The "Connections to People and Places" framing covers the cross-cutting themes that show up across both Stage 1 HSIE strands: who we are, where we are, who came before us in this place, and how we are connected to people elsewhere. It's the foundation of the inquiry-based historical and geographical thinking that builds across Stage 2 ("First Contacts") and Stage 3 ("The Australian Colonies").

Key inquiry questions for Stage 1

The NSW HSIE syllabus is built around inquiry, not content recall. At Stage 1 the questions stay age-appropriate but they should be genuine — not multiple-choice. Examples:

• How has family life changed since my grandparents were children?
• What features make our local area different from other places?
• How do people who have lived here for thousands of generations look after Country?
• How do we connect with people in other places — by post, by phone, by visiting, by sharing food?
• What is the same about our school and a school in another country?

Good Stage 1 HSIE units help students notice that historians and geographers ask questions for a living, and that there are usually several reasonable answers to the same question depending on whose perspective you take.

Stage 1 historical and geographical thinking

Stage 1 students are expected to start working with sources at a basic level — photographs, family artefacts, simple maps, weather charts, drawings. Don't underestimate what Year 1 and 2 students can do with a guided source-analysis routine: who made this, when, why, what does it tell us, what does it leave out. The skills introduced here scale all the way through to Stage 3 source analysis when students examine convict-era newspapers and goldfields photographs.

Geographical thinking at Stage 1 means starting to read simple maps, sketch their own, and notice features. Most Year 1 students can produce a recognisable bedroom map after a single guided lesson, and most Year 2 students can do the same for the school grounds. Teachers running Stage 1 HSIE alongside Stage 1 HSIE more broadly often find these skills carry across into the Geography and History strands.

A practical teaching sequence

Stage 1 HSIE units typically run for six to eight weeks and integrate naturally with English (recount writing about a family member, descriptive writing about a place) and Creative Arts (drawing maps, drawing portraits of family members). A workable sequence:

1. Frame the inquiry (week 1) — introduce the central question. Hook students with a strong story or a striking photograph. For Year B "Past in the Present", show then-and-now photos of the local main street; for Year A "Family Life", bring in an older relative or photo collection from the 1950s.
2. Personal connections (weeks 1-2) — students start with their own family, place, or experience. Family timelines, neighbourhood maps, identity portraits.
3. Wider perspectives (weeks 2-4) — extend beyond personal experience. Stories from other times or places, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on Country.
4. Sources and evidence (weeks 3-5) — explicit teaching of source-analysis routines. Mini-lessons on what photographs, artefacts, or maps can and cannot tell us.
5. Synthesise and present (weeks 5-7) — students produce something to share. Class books, museum displays, family-tree posters, simple presentations to another class.
6. Reflect (week 7-8) — explicit reflection on what changed in their thinking, plus an assessment artefact tied to syllabus outcomes.

Many Stage 1 teachers integrate ANZAC Day commemorations into Term 2 alongside this unit — see our ANZAC Day teaching resources guide for ready-to-use slides and activities scaled for Year 1 and 2.

Teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives well

The Stage 1 HSIE syllabus is explicit that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures are a cross-curriculum priority — they should be embedded across the year, not treated as a single unit. Some practical principles for the Stage 1 classroom:

• Use sources created by First Nations people (storybooks, recorded yarns, contemporary art) alongside other sources. Don't only teach about Aboriginal peoples; teach with their voices and works.
• Connect to local Country wherever possible — what is the name of the Country your school sits on, and who are the Traditional Custodians?
• Use accurate, age-appropriate language about connection to Country, kinship, and care for the environment.
• Build in regular routines (Acknowledgement of Country, sharing of First Nations storybooks during library) so that perspectives are present every week, not only during NAIDOC Week or Reconciliation Week.

For teachers wanting fully scripted lesson sequences across Stage 1 HSIE, our NSW HSIE explicit lesson plans guide collects packaged units by stage. The carousels below pull together teacher-created Stage 1 HSIE resources for both the History and Geography strands.