The anchor year of the program. Students transition from discovery to real understanding — WA's position in the global economy, the true breadth of available roles, honest salary and pathway data, and the ethical questions the industry faces. Career beliefs shift here.
Year 7 is where wonder becomes understanding — and at five units, it is the biggest year in the program. Students map what lies beneath their feet and the water systems that surround it, follow a single commodity from WA rock to the device in their pocket, weigh whether extracting a resource is truly worth it, hear the unvarnished reality of resource careers, and design solutions for the industry of 2040. It matters because this is the first year of secondary school: the systems students learn to see now — supply chains, markets, trade-offs — are the ones their subject choices will soon depend on.
Every unit arrives classroom-ready — full lesson sequences, slides, student workbooks and assessment rubrics, aligned to the revised Western Australian Curriculum, mandated from 2026.
Why does the ground beneath WA — and the water within it — matter to the whole world?
Five lessons · The Lucky Ground, Literally · Mapping the Endowment · Water: The Resource Behind the Resources · Scarcity Under the Sun · Why This Ground Matters to the World
How does something buried underground end up in your pocket?
Five lessons · The Phone Teardown · The Chain · Opportunity Cost at the Mine Gate · Round and Round: The Circular Flow · Who Owns the Chain?
How do we decide whether extracting a resource is truly worth it?
Five lessons · What Makes a Place Good to Live? · Environmental Quality · Building the Criteria · The Proposal · The Verdict
Could I see myself working in this industry — and what would it be like?
Five lessons · Jobs You've Never Heard Of · The Real Numbers · Live In or Fly In? · The Q&A · Job Reality Profile
What does WA's resources industry need to look like in 2040?
Five lessons · What's Changing · What Innovation Actually Is · Find the Problem · The Design Sprint · Pitch Day
All twenty-five lessons share one skeleton — a teacher who has run one Ground Up WA lesson can run any of them. No prescribed durations: schools pace each phase to their own periods.
A hook with genuine intrigue — an object, image, number or claim. Never “today we will learn about…”
Direct teaching and modelling from the deck; one concept, concretely anchored in WA.
Students work in the workbook or the printable activity; the teacher circulates. This is most of the lesson.
Consolidation and the workbook exit ticket — the formative evidence trail, every single lesson.
Every lesson ends with an exit ticket; every workbook carries a mid-unit checkpoint. One summative task per unit — each with a student task sheet, a four-level rubric written against the Year 7 achievement standard, and a marking guide with annotated samples.
Year 7 teaches the following mandated content, quoted verbatim from the revised Western Australian Curriculum. Verified against the authoritative SCSA document; no paraphrase is ever presented as quotation.
“The classification of environmental resources as renewable or non-renewable”
“The location, distribution and variability of Australia’s water resources”
“Water scarcity and what causes it; why it is a problem; and ways of overcoming water scarcity”
“The factors that influence the decisions people make about where to live and their perceptions of the liveability of places”
“The influence of environmental quality on the liveability of places”
“The influence of accessibility to services and facilities on the liveability of places”
“Why opportunity cost exists when decisions are made to allocate limited resources to meet unlimited needs and wants”
“The interdependence between households and businesses using the two-sector circular flow model”
“How businesses respond to the changing tastes and preferences of consumers”
“How businesses set prices for a product and how they might adjust the price according to changes in demand”
“Different types of business ownership”
“The concept of innovation and the ways businesses identify and respond to business opportunities”
“The characteristics of entrepreneurs, including the behaviours and skills they bring to their businesses”
Source: SCSA, Humanities and Social Sciences — Scope and sequence of the mandated curriculum content, P–10, For implementation in 2026. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander business case studies in Unit 5 address the mandated cross-curriculum priority. Career learning content sits alongside, not inside, the mandated curriculum.
One page of guidance per unit. Everything else is done.
Lesson sequences, decks, workbooks and rubrics included.
Aligned to the revised WA Curriculum every school teaches from 2026.
Worker videos, site content and industry panels arranged through the program.
Ground Up WA acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, learn and work across Western Australia, and pays respect to Elders past and present.