Suggested Classroom Activities
Curriculum Guide
Here is a list of curriculum areas where the National Treasures could be used.
Curriculum Area |
Key Learning Focus relevant to National Treasures |
Relevant National Treasure objects |
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History Civics and Citizenship Culture, Society and Environment |
Heritage Heroes Significant events and people in Australian history Creating representations of history Multiculturalism and immigration Culture and identity War Depression Convict society Evidence Empathy |
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Geography
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Resources Environment
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English
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Texts Language Communicating Contextual understanding Presenting to audiences
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Media Studies |
Creating representations
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Art
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Personal responses Stylistic features
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Technology
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Information systems Materials Design
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Key to Columns:
| 1 Phar Lap's Hide |
| 2 Gallipoli Boat |
| 3 Thomson Car |
| 4 First Surfboard |
| 5 Endeavour Journal |
| 6 CSIRAC Computer |
| 7 The Magic Pudding Illustrations |
| 8 Cuc Lam's Suitcase |
| 9 The Sentimental Bloke Film |
| 10 Bradman's Bats |
| 11 Tom Roberts' Bailed Up |
| 12 Convict Shirt |
| 13 HMAS Sydney's Carley Float |
| 14 Vice-Regal Rolls Royce |
| 15 Waltzing Matilda Song Sheet |
Suggested Classroom Activities
The contents of the site
The site contains files on each of the 15 National Treasures.
Each file contains:
- a short (5 minute) video exploration of each National Treasure
- a transcript of each video clip
- a worksheet for using each video clip
- a worksheet for using a photograph of each National Treasure
- a worksheet for using Warren Brown's cartoon of each National Treasure.
Teachers may want their students to look at each of these, or they may select only one, or any combination of them, for classroom use.
You can click here to go straight to the National Treasures
Three different approaches
The National Treasures can be used in three different ways in the classroom:
| 1 | Starting Points to stimulate students to become engaged with a new topic. |
This approach may involve using the selected National Treasure as a short stimulus activity, introducing a topic in an innovative way that students may now explore in greater depth using totally different resources. In this approach the National Treasure may only be a five minute element of a lesson. |
| 2 | Developing Hypotheses, that students will then test by other activities during a topic. |
In this approach the teacher may use several of the worksheets for the one object (video, photograph and cartoon), using them to have students develop a set of hypotheses that they will then test using other resources. In this approach the National Treasure may be the main focus of one or two lessons. |
| 2 | Breakouts, using the National Treasure to start brainstorming a variety of ways of investigating a topic or image further. |
In this approach students look at one or more of the worksheets provided about a National Treasure, together with additional material and suggested questions to help broaden their thinking into cross-curriculum areas. In this approach the National Treasure is a springboard into wider investigations — it may only be a small initial component of a lesson, stimulating students to think more broadly about key ideas raised. This option is only available for five of the National Treasures: the Gallipoli Boat, Endeavour Journal, Tom Roberts' Bailed Up, Convict Shirt and Cuc Lam's Suitcase. |
Worksheets for each National Treasure
The site provides printable classroom worksheets for each of the National Treasures. These allow students to explore each National Treasure in the classroom using any combination of these possible approaches:
- Looking at the video clip, and answering questions about the National Treasure
- Focusing on a photograph of the object, and answering questions about the National Treasure
- Looking at Warren Brown's comments about the National Treasure in an interview.
You can click here to go straight to the National Treasures
ELearning Activities
The site also provides a series of interactive elearning activities to allow students to develop historical understandings by working with the National Treasures as a set, rather than as individual objects. These elearning activities are:
- Sequencing the objects to get a sense of change over time — 'this is older than this but not as old as that …'
- Creating a timeline to understand a more detailed chronology of the National Treasures and their place in Australian history
- Interpreting the meanings and messages of cartoons to develop captions for each of the National Treasures
- Making judgements and setting criteria for evaluating heritage by ranking the National Treasures.
- Creating a National Treasures poster that requires a more interpretative approach to the National Treasures and their meanings.
In this approach teachers have a new topic in mind — e.g. convicts — and use the National Treasure simply as a starting point, a way of getting students to think about a topic.
In this approach the teacher can direct students to:
The photograph of the particular National Treasure, and the associated worksheet.
and / or:
The Warren Brown cartoon image of the National Treasure, and the associated worksheet.
Students look at the object, either in its photographic or cartoon representation, or both, and create a series of questions that they would like to explore further about the topic.
For example, with the Convict Shirt photograph and cartoon, students might decide that they would like to know how many convicts came to Australia, or where they came from, or what conditions were like for a convict, or why a shirt was so valuable, or where convicts were kept, or...
The questions are almost limitless.
These questions should then be answered by the further work that teachers direct the students to do in class on that topic. One resource that students can use in their further research is the video clip for the particular National Treasure.
The elearning exercises and, if appropriate, the 'Finding Out More' component for the five more detailed National Treasures (Convict Shirt, Gallipoli Boat, Cuc Lam’s Suitcase, Tom Roberts' Bailed Up and Endeavour Journal) will also be useful further resources for students.
Other links are provided throughout the worksheets, so students can be encouraged to come back to the rich resources on the site and enjoy these resources without necessarily feeling that they are a compulsory work element.
Click here to see a grid showing where the 15 National Treasures can be used in key curriculum areas.
2. Developing Hypotheses
In this approach teachers use the National Treasures worksheets to help students create hypotheses about the object, which they will then 'test' through other more traditional research and classroom activities.
Teachers could start with the photograph of the object, then have students consider the additional ideas that are raised in the cartoon representation of it, and finally look at the video clips.
Students will now have a series of well-developed ideas that they can take with them to the study of the topic as determined by the teacher.
This approach is similar to the Starting Points approach except that it asks students to develop their initial ideas much more, and to take a series of hypotheses with them into their further investigations.
The elearning exercises and, if appropriate, the 'Finding Out More' component for the five National Treasures (Convict Shirt, Gallipoli Boat, Cuc Lam's Suitcase, Bailed Up and Endeavour Journal) will also be useful further resources for students' use.
Other links are provided throughout the worksheets, so students can be encouraged to come back to the rich resources on the site and enjoy these resources without necessarily feeling that they are a compulsory work element.
3. Breakouts
This approach involves providing stimulus resources and questions to allow students to roam more broadly over a topic.
It can be an additional approach supplementing the Starting Points or Developing Hypotheses approaches, or it can be a separate and self-contained approach designed to provide enrichment to students in their own studies.
The five National Treasures dealt with in this way, together with their main curriculum focus and key activities, are:
Gallipoli Boat (History, Art, English, Media Studies) |
• Imagining the experience |
Endeavour Journal (History, Art, English) |
• The meaning of 'discovery' |
Cuc Lam's Suitcase (History, English, Civics and Citizenship) |
• Imagining the refugee experience |
Tom Roberts' Bailed Up (History, Art, English, Discovering Democracy) |
• Analysing a painting |
Convict Shirt (History, English) |
• Reconstructing the life of a female convict through evidence |
