Bendigo Gold
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BENDIGO GOLD CROSS CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Chapters 1-4 The Envelope, A Flash from the Past, The Private letter and The Official Letter
Finding the official will and the private letter which leads to Granny’s decision to go to Australia.
Give the children fifteen minutes to glean as much information from the chapters. Divide children into teams and have a table quiz.
Chapter 7 A Brush with the Bush – The Koala Rescue
Informative writing - Ask children to google “Koalas” and write under the following headings: Appearance, habitat, breeding habits, food, and other fascinating facts.
Chapters 8-9 Hotel Shamrock and Prospecting for Gold
OTHER ACTIVITES – refer to www.bendigogold.weebly.com
Chapters 1-4 The Envelope, A Flash from the Past, The Private letter and The Official Letter
Finding the official will and the private letter which leads to Granny’s decision to go to Australia.
- Make a list of the items that Granny will carry with her in her handbag on the plane.
- Divide them into personal items and business items.
- Collect samples or create samples of the various business documents: flight confirmation, travel and health insurance, boarding pass, passports, visas for Australia, Granny’s and Emilly’s long birth certificate showing the names of their parents, car rental transfer for car in Australia, Hotel Shamrock reservations in Bendigo, Patrick O’Neill’s will, Patrick O’Neill’s letter, money – Australian dollars, master card and visa card,
- Gather personal bits for Granny’s bag: toothbrush and paste, nail varnish, wipes, make up, hanky, purse, biro, book, phone, glasses, tablets.
- Make a list of the things Emilly packed in her suitcase.
Give the children fifteen minutes to glean as much information from the chapters. Divide children into teams and have a table quiz.
Chapter 7 A Brush with the Bush – The Koala Rescue
Informative writing - Ask children to google “Koalas” and write under the following headings: Appearance, habitat, breeding habits, food, and other fascinating facts.
Chapters 8-9 Hotel Shamrock and Prospecting for Gold
- Google Bendigo. Get an aerial view of Hotel Shamrock and surrounding area.
- Look up the hotel website and find out information about the hotel. Has it changed since the book was written in 2012?
- Google Back Creek Rd. Travel along the road beside the creek, rotate the view so the children can look into the woods.
- Teach about the gold rush and get children to extend the diary entries
- Get children to write a present day journal that will be put in the school attic…a journal that school children will discover and read in a hundred years’ time!
- Lively debate: Emilly’s comment “Children have to accept adult’s decisions – one of life’s golden rules.
- Google www.bendigogold.weebly.com ask children to read about Deborah Mine and answer the questions.
- Google www.bendigogold.weebly.com ask children to read about the ghost of Lady Deborah and answer the questions.
- Write a story “Lost down the Mine”
- Tell the story of the Lady Deborah to a younger class/ to parents etc
- Prepare a drama – The naughty boys who got lost down the mine have been enrolled in your class!
- See www.bendigogold.weebly.com and look at photos of Bendigo
- Check google maps. Look at streetscapes, aerial photos and town layout
- Compare the present streetscapes with those in James Meadow’s painting, Bendigo Art Gallery.
- Discover about “The Southern Star”. Draw the southern night sky.
- Check ten best tourist attractions on google, and write a brochure for the town. Each group does a different attraction.
- Draw a banner for the town
- Design an advertisement for the town.
- Children pick out the difficult words. Have a chat about them.
- Look up other Chinese myths and legends
- Draw a picture of the story
- Each group creates a freeze picture in sequence.
- Discuss “Children should trust their instincts about people and tell.”
- Discuss “People can trick us by telling us how great we are.”
- Look up images of gold maps. Chat about these and ask children to design their own gold maps based on an area around their homes.
- Look up Aborigine myths, legends and traditions. Ask children to write or tell.
- Fabulous video of Aborigines on bendigogold.weebly.com/
- Face paint like Aborigines
- Using Aborigine templates, make Aborigine dot pictures
- Design a symbol story belt. See www.bendigogold.weebly.com
- Create rain sounding instruments using Aborigine designs
- Write a radio play about this chapter
- Look up Irish myths and legends. Write /tell/ paint
- Pick out “seanchaí” phraseology.
- Discuss the effects of the false accusation of Pa O’Neill on his wife, his child and on Johnny Mac
- Discuss – What should people do when they are wrongly accused? Has it ever happened to you?
- Discuss what children have learned so far about the character of Bates
- What are disabilities? Do we treat people with disabilities differently? Why? Discuss
- Write a paragraph describing what you do and how you feel when you are in bed and you can’t go to sleep.
- Consider the nasty or negative things people say about you. How can you turn those negative things into positive things? How did Mr Wu do it?
- Google Bendigo Festival and paint a picture of Sun Loong , the longest Imperial Dragon in the World
- Teacher teaches the difference between General Law Title where the chain of deeds was kept in the local lawyer’s office, and the Torrens System where the deeds are filed centrally. Important to clarify at this stage.
- Divide class in three to find out as much as they can about the three religions mentioned in the book: Aborigine Dreamtime, Christianity and Taoism.
- Examine the logic of the detective story – the steps towards discovery of the fraud. Use the language of Science and Geography - : questioning, observing, predicting, investigating, recognising, interpreting, recording and communicating
- How does the author build tension? Consider sound, body language, vocabulary, behaviour of the various people.
- What do you do when adults don’t listen? Discuss.
- A review of the book, plot and characters
- Science activities to test for real gold
- Write a synopsis of the book
OTHER ACTIVITES – refer to www.bendigogold.weebly.com
- Pick out all the words, “gold” or “golden” and discover what they are referring to.
- Pick out the themes in the book and build discussion around these topics. See website for information on special needs, justice and injustice, emigration, superstition, religion, symbolism, the meaning of wealth
- Read the back of the book for further discussion questions
- Google website, examine the letter from 1868, found in Union Hall in Co. Cork, and answer the questions.
- Projects on Australia; Aborigines, gold mining, wildlife etc
- Apply the various genre, texts and styles used in Bendigo Gold, in other contexts.
- Compare the four, historic time shots in the book: Aborigine, Gold Rush, 1945 and 2012