On Monday the 22nd of July, year 5 went to Sovereign Hill, Ballarat and we had such an amazing time! We all had to write a letter to the principal asking if we could go to their school before we went. We went to a school program on two of the three days whilst we were there, we learnt so many cool things that children did in the 1850s such as learning Irish Gaelic, (for the girls, sewing and for the boys, drawing), writing in copperplate font, reading, and maths.
I learnt a lot during the unit, The Hard Road Ahead like in the 1850s, they had a very different lifestyle to now, to children could only smear when they were spoken to and if girls/women had to wear a dress and boys/men had to wear a shirt. Girls didn’t have the same rights that they have now, they weren’t allowed to vote or do other things that when could do. They also had to get married extremely young, back then, you were expected be engaged by 14 years old, married when they were 15 years old and have their first child by the time they were 16 years old.
The businesses in the 1850s are also very different to now because there are certain jobs that only boys/men could have and certain jobs that only girls/women could have such as women couldn’t try to find gold and men couldn’t be a chef or a seamstress. Usually a chef will make damper, pancakes,and other baked goods, they will also cook strews and meat. There were many ways that the men could find gold, they could mine, they could pan for gold and using special machines to find the gold in the sand and dirt. Most businesses were family run.
The Eureka Stockade was one of the biggest things that has happened in Australian history. The diggers set up the actual Stockade the night before the Eureka Stockade happened. The Eureka Stockade started at 5am on the 3rd of December 1854 and it only lasted for 15 minutes. In total, 22 people died in the Eureka Stockade including 1 woman and many were injured. During the Stockade, Peter Lalor got injured but managed to escape and he survived.
Some important people and figures from the 1850s and the Eureka Stockade was definitely Peter Lalor because he was a great leader to the miners and was a big part of the Stockade, he was also was a part of the reason that all of the miners burnt their licences. Two more important figures from the 1850s were James Scobie and James Bentley, James Bentley owned the Eureka Hotel and murdered James Scobie, there was a big case at court about it and James Bentley got let free because he was friends with the judge, the miners were really angry about this, this lead to a chain of events including the Rebellion and the Stockade.
Some important dates were 1851, 1851 was when gold was first discovered gold in Australia, after gold was first found, many people from all around the world came to fund their fortune, people mainly came from, England, Ireland, China, Scotland and others. Another important date was definitely 1854, if you don’t already know, 1854 was when the Eureka Stockade happened. This was a huge milestone in Australia’s history. The Eureka Stockade was also a very crucial part of our history many people died and many were injured. Another important date was 1788, this was when the first fleet arrived in Australia.
After we went to Sovereign Hill, our grade (in classes) made a diorama of Sovereign Hill. We were put into partners and made one of the buildings from Sovereign Hill together, my partner was Henry and we made the Clarke Brother Grocers, the diorama was really fun to make! In our integrated sessions we would make it and at home, it was a really great experience and our partners had to be co-ed so that was really fun working with someone new and someone I hadn’t worked worked before.
In this unit I learnt so many new, cool things and the great thing about this unit was that we incorporated lots of different things into it, such as maths, writing, reading and more. In maths we used location, shape, angels, and volume. We used mapping and location in the diorama because we had to draw a birds eye view of the diorama and do directions to get to 3 landmarks. In reading we learnt new vocabulary, we write newspaper articles m and did lots of compare and contrasts. We did so many amazing and creative activities in writing, but my favourite activities my favourite was writing the newspaper articles, we had to write a front page of a newspaper article which was a really cool idea! In all of the reading activities that we did I really liked learning the new vocabulary and writing/reading the compare and contrasts.
Some of the PLA’s that I used whilst making the diorama with my partner was communication because Henry and I had to communicate what we were doing and who was making what and who would take home what. I also think that I used courage because I haven’t ever really worked with Henry before and I had to have courage to work with him. We also used resilience because sometimes our building didn’t work or we did something wrong, we had to have resilience and just keep going. I think the last PLA we used was connectedness and collaboration because for collaboration when we were coming up with ideas for what we should do, we needed to collaborate with each other, and connectedness was another one because we had to connect when we were thinking of ideas and making our diorama.
One of our challenges was that we only had 3 weeks to make it and we almost didn’t finish it, but luckily our teacher, Mrs. Straford gave us an extra session for making which was really helpful so we did end up finishing. We also at the start found it hard to come up with ideas for what we were going to do and what it would look like, but we starting brainstorming and collaborating and came up with some really good ideas.
One of my major highlights was definitely camp! I loved the cabin I was in too! I was with Izzy, Claire, Kiera, Ruby, and Millie and I also loved the school program, we had to dress up in what the children had to wear back then and it made it feel so much more real. I also really liked programming the robots to go around our diorama and writing the newspaper article.
Some advise that I would give to people next time would be what Mrs. Straford always says, ‘Use your time wisely’. You really do need to use your time wisely because there are so many activities and assignments that we have to do and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on any of them so you need to get all of your work done and don’t talk to your friends or get distracted or distract someone else so that you can move onto the next thing/activity.
An overall summery of this unit is that you do so many amazing things and you learn so much about the 1850s. This is by far my favourite integrated unit that I have ever done! You learn so many interesting things about what happened during the 1850s and what it was like. There was so many things that we did from going to Sovereign Hill to making a diorama of it to programming robots to writing newspaper articles! This was a really fantastic experience that covered everything that we needed to know.
What was your favourite part about this unit and why?
Zara
Some of the activities that we did at Toona were bike riding, fishing, kayaking, camping out in tents, swimming in the ocean, going on a speed boat, games, and much more! My favourite activities were, bike riding, camping out in tents for a night, going on the boat, and kayaking! Everything was so fun but those were my favourites.
good information book is made up of realistic pictures with detail that relates to the subject that you are writing about. Another thing that makes a good information book is having clear, detailed, descriptive information, and the information has to be true and factual. In an information book you also need to list your sources of where you got all of your information and pictures otherwise it is copyright and illegal. Sometimes the author of the information book about them and the backstory to what they are writing about, they also sometimes like to write about their life and how they came up with the idea of the book that they wrote.