Australian Curriculum

Year 5 Australian communities – their past, present and possible futures

Inquiry questions

What do we know about the lives of people in Australia’s colonial past and how do we know?

How did an Australian colony develop over time and why?

How did colonial settlement change the environment?

What were the significant events and who were the significant people that shaped Australian colonies?

Researching

Locate and collect relevant information and data from primary sources and secondary sources (ACHASSI095)

Analysing

Examine primary sources and secondary sources to determine their origin and purpose (ACHASSI098)

The nature of convict or colonial presence, including the factors that influenced patterns of development, aspects of the daily life of the inhabitants (including Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples) and how the environment changed (ACHASSK107)

Elaborations

• Investigating colonial life to discover what life was like at that time for different inhabitants (for example, a European family and an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander language group, a convict and a free settler, a sugar cane farmer and an indentured labourer) in terms of clothing, diet, leisure, paid and unpaid work, shopping or trade, language, housing and children’s lives
• Mapping local, regional and state/territory rural and urban settlement patterns in the 1800s, and noting factors such as geographical features, climate, water resources, the discovery of gold, transport and access to port facilities that shaped these patterns
• Discussing challenges experienced by people in the colonial era and the enterprising or sustainable responses made to these challenges (wind energy, food preservation, communication, accessing water)
• Exploring how the colony was governed and how life changed when Governor Macquarie established the rule of law
• Investigating the impact of settlement on the local environment and its ecosystems (for example, comparing the present and past landscape and the flora and fauna of the local community)
• The reasons people migrated to Australia and the experiences and contributions of a particular migrant group within a colony (ACHASSK109 )
• Identifying the reasons why people migrated to Australia in the 1800s (for example, as convicts; assisted passengers; indentured labourers; people seeking a better life such as gold miners; and those dislocated by events such as the Industrial Revolution, the Irish Potato Famine and the Highland Clearances)
• The role that a significant individual or group played in shaping a colony (ACHASSK110)
• Investigating the contribution or significance of an individual or group to the shaping of a colony in the 1800s (for example, explorers, farmers, pastoralists, miners, inventors, writers, artists, humanitarians, religious and spiritual leaders, political activists, including women, children, and people of diverse cultures)
• Exploring the motivations and actions of an individual or group that shaped a colony

Year 9 History Depth Studies – Making a better world

Students investigate how life changed in the period in depth through the study of ONE of these major developments: the Industrial Revolution or Progressive ideas and movements or Movement of peoples. The study includes the causes and effects of the development, and the Australian experience.

Making a nation

The extension of settlement, including the effects of contact (intended and unintended) between European settlers in Australia and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (ACDSEH020)

Elaborations

• Explaining the effects of contact (for example, the massacres of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; their killing of sheep; the spread of European diseases) and categorising these effects as either intended or unintended
• Experiences of non-Europeans in Australia prior to the 1900s (such as the Japanese, Chinese, South Sea Islanders, Afghans) (ACDSEH089)
• Outlining the migration of Chinese to the goldfields in Australia in the nineteenth century and attitudes towards the Chinese as revealed in cartoons (for example, 'The Mongolian Octopus').
• Living and working conditions in Australia around the turn of the twentieth century (that is 1900) (ACDSEH090)
• Identifying the main features of housing, sanitation, transport, education and industry that influenced living and working conditions in Australia.
• Describing the impact of the gold rushes (hinterland) on the development of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’