Elizabeth Macarthur

Year 5 History – Colonial Australia

Australian curriculum Learning objectives

  • ACHHK097:[1]The role that a significant individual or group played in shaping a colony; for example, explorers, farmers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, humanitarians, religious and political leaders, and Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples.
  • ACHHS104:[2]Identify points of view in the past and present.
  • ACELY1704:[3]Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive print and multimodal texts[4], choosing text structures[5], language features[6], images and sound appropriate to purpose and audience[7]

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Resources required

  • Shaping a Nation:Elizabeth Macarthur[8]and facilities to show captioned video.
  • Student ‘find fact’ worksheet[9] x class set
  • Newspaper articles, to be used as examples
Lesson outline:
  1. Teacher explains that the class will be watching a video about the Macarthur family. Teacher asks if any of the students have heard of the influential Macarthur family- any knowledge of the family should be recorded on white/black board.
  2. Teacher plays the video to class and asks the class to think about reasons why the Macarthur family was special/different to other families from same era.
  3. Teacher and students have discussion about Macarthur family and reasons why their family situation was special.
  4. Students are given the ‘find fact’ sheet and the video is replayed- the teacher explains that students must write down important information about Elizabeth Macarthur that they can use when writing a newspaper article about her farm and family. Video is replayed.
  5. Teacher annotates on board as students share information they found interesting and want to include in the newspaper article.
  6. Teacher reviews the important aspects of creating a newspaper article - catchy headline, introducing the topic/person, inclusion of interesting information and a picture relating to the story. The article must be focussed on Elizabeth Macarthur.
  7. Students are asked to draft their article in workbooks. The article can be published once teacher has instructed each individual student. Students should be encouraged to be creative- colours, pictures, presentation, age effects etc.

Homework/extension

Students can use library, Internet and encyclopaedic resources to find further information and/or pictures that can be featured in the article.

Opportunity for further activity

Students can conduct research about a prominent figure from the Australian colonial period and create a 1 min review of the contribution this person made to society at the time. These 1 min excerpts from each student can be recorded and edited to create a class resource - ‘Faces of colonial Australia’.

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