Fishing

History

The Australian curriculum: History

The Australian Curriculum: History aims to ensure that students develop:

interest in, and enjoyment of, historical study for lifelong learning and work, including their capacity and willingness to be informed and active citizens
knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the past and the forces that shape societies, including Australian society
understanding and use of historical concepts, such as evidence, continuity and change, cause and effect, perspectives, empathy, significance and contestability
capacity to undertake historical inquiry, including skills in the analysis and use of sources, and in explanation and communication.

This resource contains extracts from the Australian Curriculum and is current as at 25 May 2011. © Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority 2010.
ACARA neither endorses nor verifies the accuracy of the information provided and accepts no responsibility for incomplete or inaccurate information. You can find the unaltered and most up to date version of this material at http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/Home
This material is reproduced with the permission of ACARA.

History activities [1]

Activity 1: An Australian inventor

Show details

Subtheme(s): Historical events; Indigenous perspectives; Inventions and electronic media

Discover

As a class, view the clip and note the solutions that the brothers come up with for catching fish. The clip illustrates the education of the boys in the ways of bushcraft, bush medicine and working as a team. Ask students to list the skills, knowledge and technologies that the boys are learning to use.
Bunda is extremely clever and inventive. Another famous Australian inventor is David Unaipon, a Ngarrindjeri man from South Australia who features on the Australian fifty-dollar note.
David Unaipon patented ten inventions in his lifetime and is credited with drawing the first sketches of the helicopter propeller based on his observations of boomerang flight. Have students investigate the inventions of David Unaipon and list them. Here are some websites to assist you with information:

ABC, 'Didj "u" Know - Stories', Who is David Unaipon?, www.abc.net.au/messageclub/duknow/stories/s888637.htm
State Library of New South Wales, 'Discover Collections', David Unaipon - Legendary Tales, www.sl.nsw.gov.au/discover_collections/history_nation/indigenous/unaipon/unaipon.html

Students could organise their notes in the 'biography wheel' provided in Student Activity Sheet H25.4: An Australian inventor, arranging their information under the following headings for David Unaipon:

Inventions
Indigenous rights activist
Writing and poetry
Legacy

In the centre of the wheel, students can draw a sketch of David Unaipon based on his image on the fifty-dollar note.

Reflect

Explore David Unaipon's life, work, writings and the context of the time. Unaipon was born in 1872 and some of his significant inventions were made in the early 1900s. Reflect on the situation for Indigenous people at the time. You may want to refer to My Place for Teachers, 'Decade timeline', from the 1870s to the 1910s.
As a class, discuss some of the challenges that David Unaipon faced. Consider what he might write about on a blog, the events he might discuss and who he would be talking to.
To explore this idea as well as other ways to embed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives in the classroom, go to Leesa Watego's slideshow presentation at:

Google Docs, 'The Critical Classroom', 5 Deadly Ways to Explore Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Perspectives of Democracy, Politics and Civics in Your Classroom, https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0AZZThDCu3oJRZGdrdmdjanhfNjYzZGdzdmZncHI&hl=en&authkey=CMiJjooE