This Term, (term 3) in integrated studies, we have focused on the 1850’s gold rush. In this gold rush unit, we have: gone to Sovereign hill where we stepped into the shoes of an 1850’s kid, created a diorama of Sovereign hill, coded a Sphero to give a tour of our mini Sovereign hill, made an exact map of our diorama with coordinates, and watched loads of texts about the Australian Gold Rush.
Some of the businesses in the 1850’s are: blacksmith, saddlery, banker, miner, chaplain, teacher, preacher, tailor, and redcoat.
For the diorama, we all were put in pairs, and needed to make a building for the diorama. My partner, Emilia, chose to do the church. I think our building turned out really well. We even made a little change on the sign to make it say Jin & Azzo’s Wesleyan church to really make it uniquely ours.
A very important event in the Gold Rush, was the Eureka Rebellion. The Eureka Rebellion was fought inside the Eureka stockade. The stockade was made of sharp spikes of wood. The war was between miners rebelling against unfair license fees, versus the redcoats following orders from Queen Victoria. About 21 miners and 7 redcoats died in the brutal, but brief battle.
Some of the famous and important figures in the gold rush are: Peter Lalor, because he lead the Eureka rebellion, Edward Hargreaves, because he was pretty much the one who started the gold rush, because he spread the word about gold in Australia.
Some of the important dates from the gold rush and around this time are: 7th of October, 1854, because this was when James Scobie died, 1851, because this was when the gold rush started.
Some of the positive learner attributes I used to make the diorama were: resilience, when I stuffed up the frontal part of the church and couldn’t put the door on the side, reflection, when the first couple of chairs were a bit largely scaled, so I had to make them again, remembering to make them smaller, collaboration, when Emilia and I did different things at the same time to save time and get more stuff done, and knowledge, when I used what I knew about nets of 3D nets to make our triangular prism roof.
One of the challenges we faced was: having to redo the benches inside, and I overcame that problem by making some more.
One of my highlights from this unit was watching our diorama grow, and then comparing the first week of the diorama to the final product.
Some advice I would give to the next people to make the diorama would be to make the road as straight as possible, and don’t add too many turns, because the pin it is quite a challenge with the Sphero coding.
Something that I learnt about Emilia was that she is very good at cutting accurately, because she nailed the wallpaper. She is also really good with hot glue. I touched the hot glue about 10 times, whereas she didn’t touch it once!
Overall, I think this was the BEST UNIT EVER!!! I really enjoyed the camp, and it was really cool how we got ‘teleported back in time’ to the 1850’s and see what it was like those kids on the goldfields.
What has your favourite integrated unit been? Why do you say that?