Humanities and social sciences / Year 5 / Inquiry and skills / Questioning

Curriculum content descriptions

Develop appropriate questions to guide an inquiry about people, events, developments, places, systems and challenges (ACHASSI094)

Elaborations
  • asking questions before, during and after an investigation to frame and guide the stages of an inquiry
  • developing different types of questions for different purposes (for example, probing questions to seek details, open-ended questions to elicit more ideas, practical questions to guide the application of enterprising behaviours)
  • developing questions to guide the identification and location of useful sources for an investigation or project (for example, ‘Is this source useful?’, ‘Who can help us do this project?’, ‘What rules/protocols must we follow when we do this inquiry/project?’, ‘What resources do we need to conduct this project?’)
General capabilities
  • Literacy Literacy
  • Critical and creative thinking Critical and creative thinking
ScOT terms

Authenticity (Texts),  Experiments,  Research questions,  Human settlements,  Geographic location,  Business and enterprise

Text

The Australian Colonies: Gold

This inquiry-based unit presents students with a range of visual primary sources to spark curiosity about life in the 1800s. Each activity introduces a new concept related to the Australian Gold Rushes.

Interactive

Perspectives on Kamay

This resource explores the perspectives of the Aboriginal people of Kamay Botany Bay and the men aboard the HMB Endeavour upon their meeting in 1770. It will also help students to understand the history of Australia's Aboriginal peoples and why their stories of the past are equally important to hear. Note to Aboriginal ...

Online

Significant Individuals - Governor Macquarie

In this sequence of two learning activities, explore the life of Governor Macquarie as a significant person in history. Students examine events, people, politics economics, social structures and settlement patterns of the colonial period. Video content and links to the State Library of NSW's artefacts are used to support ...

Interactive

MoneySmart: Party time

This learning object helps students to create a simple financial plan. Students create a plan for a party within an allocated budget. Students can choose between items of different values including food, drinks, decorations, entertainment and prizes. The learning object comes with teacher and parent notes.

Online

Chinese migrants and the Gold Rush

Throughout the 1800s Chinese migrated to colonial Australia to try their luck on the goldfields. This Look to Learn activity enables you to explore what life was like for the Chinese migrants through primary sources from this period.

Assessment

Year 5 history assessment - Investigating the colonial period in Australia: Shaping the Australian colonies

This is an assessment package that uses the Year 5 Australian Curriculum history achievement standard to gather evidence about how well students have demonstrated what they know, what they understand and what they can do in relation to the topic 'The Australian Colonies'. Students develop and deliver a multimodal presentation ...

Text

Journeys and Connections

This resource displays objects related to stories of migration to Australia. Students locate and research relevant objects in their own community and create a digital story of migration. The resource uses objects from the Australian Journeys exhibition at the National Museum of Australia.

Online

Making history

This resource supports students, individuals and community groups to research, produce and share a short digital history about a person or event.

Text

Albert Namatjira: Unit of work

This unit of work has been written to support the book Albert Namatjira in which award-winning artist Vincent Namatjira tells the life story of his great-grandfather, Albert Namatjira, one of Australia’s best-known artists. This unit includes practical ideas for using this book in your classroom.

Video

Life As a Female Convict: Cascades Female Factory

The Cascades Female Factory was both a prison and a factory for female convicts in early Hobart. It was a place where convict women were forced to undertake labour in slave-like conditions to support the fledgling colony. Learn what life at the Female Factory was like for the inmates. What sort of work did the women do? ...

Video

Trees and connection

Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian man Bruce Pascoe explains his connection to Country and introduces us to a family of trees. In what ways does Bruce’s relationship with the Earth differ from yours?

Video

Counted: Australian culture in the 1960s

What was Australia like in the 1960s? Why does reporter Stan Grant say that "change is coming" at this time, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people? Choose one of the people mentioned in this video and do some research into their sporting, artistic or political achievements.

Video

BTN: Aboriginal astronomy

Many ancient cultures studied the night sky, and we know this because it is reflected in some of the earliest stories we have on record. Learn about one of these stories in this video. Other than the Dreamtime stories, what other evidence might there be that the Aboriginal people studied the stars?

Video

Impact of European settlement on Aboriginal Tasmanians video

Aboriginal Tasmanians had inhabited Tasmania for over 40,000 years before the arrival of European settlers. What do you think life was like for Aboriginal Tasmanians before then? Why might have they embarked on a war, called the 'Black War', once settlers began arriving in Tasmania, despite existing relatively peacefully ...

Online

How do you make a difference?

In this learning sequence, students determine improvements they would like to see in public transport. They research ways of suggesting improvements to public transport authorities and other decision makers, and prepare letters and emails for this purpose. They prioritise future improvements and develop arguments to support ...

Interactive

The Orb

The Orb is a collection of multimedia learning resources about Tasmanian Aboriginal histories and cultures. It explores the interconnections between people, Country, culture, identity, and the living community. The multimedia resources have between three and five sections in which Tasmanian Aboriginal people share their ...

Video

The water cycle in the Murray-Darling Basin

This 12 minute video explains the water cycle in the context of the Murray Darling Basin and the great variability in rainfall in the region causing frequent floods and droughts. It highlights the importance of the rivers in the Murray Darling Basin for agriculture, environmental health, water supply, habitat for migratory ...

Text

Cotton Australia fact sheets

This library provides a series of one to two page fact sheets on a range of topics related to the Australian cotton industry including: an overview of the industry, history of the cotton industry in Australia and in the world; economics of Australian cotton; biotechnology; climate challenges and cotton; properties of cotton ...

Online

Burke and Wills: Then and Now

This is a website about a journey in 2010 that retraced the 1860 Burke and Wills expedition from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Topics include: the landscape, the route, the flora and fauna, Burke’s tree, aboriginal bush foods and various interviews with experts and involved individuals. The resource is presented ...

Online

Seeing the Land from an Indigenous Canoe

This is website about the significant contribution Aboriginal people made in colonial times by guiding European explorers and colonists, stock and goods across the Victorian river systems. The resource includes introductory information and 31 Story Objects in the format of videos, audio, images and text. Each object also ...