The Australian Gold Rush

Get ready for our trip to Bathurst, the home of the first Australian Gold Fields, by finding out all about the Gold Rush era of the mid 1800s in Australia.

Here are some great activities to help you build your knowledge about the Gold Rush:


Homework Week 4 - Amazing Gold Facts
Visit the Discovery Channel's website here and the  SBS interactive site about gold here to find some amazing facts about gold (The Patents link has lots of good facts and vocab). Make a list of the words to create your own word bank with words that are relevant to gold. Create a wordle or Tagzedo about Gold and print it out and bring it in to glue into your HSIE book

Class Reading
Visit the SBS's amazing site  to learn all about the Gold Rush era in Australia.  Click on the Discovery link and learn all about Edward Hargraves, who was instrumental in starting the Gold Rush in Australia.



Independent Reading
Read the Australian Gold Rush timeline that you have been given.  Highlight the most important events.  Use the reading to add gold vocabulary to your Wordle.

Paired Research Activity
Use the above amazing site to visit in pairs.  Note take and create a personal KWL chart in your HSIE book.  What do you Know about the Gold Rush in Australia already?  What do you Want to know?  This will help you to have some questions in mind that you would like to answer during our trip to Bathurst.  When we get back from Bathurst, you can fill in the last section, what have you Learnt?  The site contains heaps of interactive links, maps, stories etc to click on and learn about the Australian gold rush and some of the characters associated with it.  A fantastic resource for you to use.
 


Class Viewing - What's Happening Now?The modern take:
New use for old Gold mines - watch this quick BTN video about old gold mines and whats happening with them now.