Topic: History - First Contacts

Year: 4 Time: 60 min

Victorian Curriculum VCELY288 VCHHC070
Content Area:

Relevant elaboration: Asking and Exploring different stories about contact

answering experiences and early penal life to discover the
questions thoughts or feelings of the people at that time

During this lesson students will: Describe positive and negative points using evidence
from a text.

LESSON PLAN
Literacy learning intentions:
We are learning to...find persuasive points to describe the first contact between
Aboriginal Peoples and European settlers as a negative and positive experience using
information from texts.

Learning behaviours:
I need to...
- answer: Was the arrival of the Endeavour on Aboriginal land a positive
experience for the two groups of people? (4 pros, 4 cons using T chart)
- use information from text to support my points.

Success criteria for whole class:

I am doing well if I...
- describe positive and negative reactions during first contact
- make links to the text to show my ideas are realistic

Success criteria for focus teaching group:

I am doing well if I
- can place post-its in the text that could support an argument
- use these to create sentences to argue that first contact was positive or
negative.

Hook: Ask students whether they think Milba & Leonard meeting was positive. Ask for
reasons. Note down responses of pros & cons on board, ask for possible cons if none
are given.

Before:
- Describe the limited historical text from the time of the first arrival
 - Brainstorm what students would write on their first day meeting some new
people

During:
- Think about whether it sounds like Captain Cook is making friends with the
Aborigines he meets.

After:
- Discussion
What do you think of the language used to describe the two Aborigines in
canoes?
- Introduce learning intentions and success criteria
- Model the language of using evidence to support with the class (See Appendix
A).
- Students work in pairs to put 4 arguments in both columns of the T chart (see
Appendix B)
- Pairs swap with another pair to convince each other using their points that it was
either negative or positive.
- Students discuss the effectiveness of the evidence each used.

Focus group:
- Students write post it notes of arguments (see Appendix C)
- As a group, use the transcript (see Appendix D) to identify which moment made
them think that.
- Ask students how one part of the text could be used as evidence for a negative
or positive experience.
- Students, while listening on iPads, create 5 more post it notes, pausing at
moments to mark the time.
- Students put post-it notes into books and change into sentences as modelled to
class.

Lesson Conclusion:
- Discuss how they believe the first interaction went and how students went using
evidence from the text
- Ask for examples where one part can be used for both positive or negative

WORD COUNT: 491

ABC Local Radio - Far North (2011). Getting to know the locals. ABC Splash. Retrieved

from http://abcspla.sh/m/1454404
ABC Local Radio - Far North (2011). Getting to know the locals. ABC Splash. Retrieved

from http://abcspla.sh/m/1454404

Example post-it note formats for focus group