Humanities and social sciences / Year 5 / Knowledge and Understanding / History

Curriculum content descriptions

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)
General capabilities
  • Critical and creative thinking Critical and creative thinking
  • Intercultural understanding Intercultural understanding
Cross-curriculum priorities
ScOT terms

Social history,  Lifestyles,  Human impact,  Colonies,  Human settlements

Interactive

Gold rush: level 2

Dig for gold on the Ballarat goldfields in 1865. Try your luck at alluvial or shaft mining. Buy a miner's permit, tools and enough supplies to last a month. Discover how hard life was on the goldfields. Explore a map showing the countries migrants left to join the gold rush in Australia. Find out which towns developed due ...

Interactive

Old Government House Parramatta virtual tour

This resource is about exploring Governor Macquarie’s preferred residence while learning more about the early colony through this virtual tour of Old Government House at Parramatta.

Interactive

Resistance

This resource is a virtual tour of the Resistance exhibition at The National Museum of Australia showing different responses by Aboriginal people to British colonisation. See videos and enlarged views of objects and texts in the exhibition.

Interactive

Australian coin history

This interactive slideshow from the Royal Australian Mint provides a series of high resolution images and brief descriptions of currencies from Indigenous barter systems to modern Australian currency. A downloadable fact sheet on Australian coin history is accessible from selected pages within the slideshow.

Interactive

Biodiversity – sustainability action process (Years 3–6)

This biodiversity learning resource guides students through an extended school based investigation. Students develop and implement a chosen sustainability action and then evaluate and reflect on their success and their learning.

Interactive

Mystery at Rookwood

Mystery at Rookwood explores aspects of Chinese migration to Australia in the nineteenth century. In a game approach, students have to assist the 'ghost' of colonial entrepreneur Quong Tart in discovering his true identity. To do this, they examine a series of primary and secondary sources across six topics before attempting ...

Interactive

WeCommemorate

WeCommemorate is a series of challenges for teachers to use with students to commemorate Australia's involvement in the First World War. These project-based challenges have been designed to engage students from Early Stage 1 to Stage 5 in the production of creative multimedia works and to develop 21st century learning skills. ...

Interactive

Sustainable transport – sustainability action process (Years 3–6)

This sustainable transport learning resource will guide students through an extended school based investigation. Students will develop and implement a chosen sustainability action and then evaluate and reflect on their success and their learning.

Text

Biosecurity surveillance at school

This activity outlines the process to undertake a biosecurity surveillance of a school environment. The teacher guide, slides and student sheets identify some invasive pests that represent a threat to NSW agriculture including cane toads, fire ants and exotic bees. The activity could be adapted for other locations.

Text

Beautiful biomes

In this lesson students learn the features of the five main biomes, and use ClassVR headsets and CoSpaces to design and create a virtual biome to explore. They research and identify the features of a biome and then create their own virtual environment. The resource explores the human impacts on biodiversity and explore ...

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.

Interactive

Waste and materials – sustainability action process (Years 3–6)

This resource guides students through an extended school-based or local investigation focussed on waste and materials using the five-step sustainability action process. The resource supports the investigation of a real-world issue or problem. Students develop and implement a chosen sustainability action and then evaluate ...

Interactive

Remembering them - mobile application

This App provides a geocoded list and historical descriptions of memorials, museums, shrines, monuments, buildings and war graves and other Australian sites that commemorate Australian's wartime history. The cross-platform application is available for free download from iTunes and Google Play. Teacher notes are available ...

Interactive

Kitchen gardens – sustainability action process (Years 3–6)

This resource guides students through an extended school-based or local investigation focussed on kitchen gardens using the five-step sustainability action process. The resource supports the investigation of a real-world issue or problem. Students develop and implement a chosen sustainability action and then evaluate and ...

Interactive

Endeavour – eight days in Kamay

This learning and teaching resource provides a range of viewpoints and works to challenge current perceptions of the arrival of Captain James Cook and the HMB Endeavour at Kamay Botany Bay in 1770. It is an inclusive resource, placing value on the Aboriginal perspective to "balance the history books" by looking both from ...

Online

Heritage Council Victoria: resources for teachers and students

This is a collection of resources exploring Victoria’s history and heritage. There are four main sections. The Victoria's Framework of Historical Themes section includes a downloadable teacher guide and lesson starters, it is organised in historical themes. The Vic-Heritage App section provides search functionality to find ...

Interactive

Thermal comfort – sustainability action process (Years 3–6)

This thermal comfort learning resource will guide students through an extended school based investigation. Students will develop and implement a chosen sustainability action and then evaluate and reflect on their success and their learning.

Text

Investigate: cane toads

This unit of work is designed to help students understand cane toads and their threat to the Australian environment and agricultural production. Why some animals are to be protected and others need to be eradicated. The resource includes a teacher guide, student learning journal and a PowerPoint presentation.

Interactive

Branyi Bayann Niiringal (Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow)

This learning and teaching resource supports schools and their communities to make important Aboriginal sites accessible on Google Maps. This resource can only be viewed in Chrome, MS Edge, Firefox and Safari. This resource is also downloadable as a SCORM file: the downloaded version will only work if you upload it to a ...

Interactive

The importance of protecting local Indigenous heritage

Students research the history of The Hills Shire Darug tribe in the importance of Indigenous sites in the area and Indigenous names associated with the North West region of Sydney. Students gain an understanding of local Indigenous groups’ connection to North West region communities through individual Indigenous inspired ...