Tag Archives: Federation

Federation in Australia: Stage 3’s political cartoons

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Stop the presses!

Traditionally, a newspaper’s political cartoons are created close to deadline.

Congratulations to our Stage 3 students, who rose to a unique occasion. Following our intensive investigation into Democracy and Federation in Australia (HSIE unit), I challenged them to break into pairs and, armed with just a black felt pen, a piece of paper and heads full of concepts and ideas, to create a political cartoon in just 20 minutes. No pencils or erasers permitted.

Federation political cartoon

Our complete Flickr slideshow is HERE.

The path to Federation

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Stage 3 students have been learning about democracy in HSIE. Now we move on to the Australian arena. A rather irreverent look at the history of Australia, by Daven Bettridge, this animated video clip demonstrates several elements of persuasive texts.


A brief history of Australia

We then investigated the Youtube search engine and found that by adding the descriptor “Parkes” (as in Sir Henry Parkes, Father of Federation), with “Australia” and “Federation”, we could bring up a useful selection of short student assignments from other schools, and promotional clips aimed at tourists. We discussed potential problems and strategies for using such information, and ways to enhance our own learning. Two of the most useful clips, for an introduction to Federation in Australia, were:


The Federation Show with Henry Parkes and Smiley Smiles


Grave of Sir Henry Parkes, Faulconbridge, NSW

Federation for Stage 3

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In Terms 3 and 4, to complement Stage 3 students’ class work in the areas of “Gold!” (Human society & its environment) and financial literacy (Priority Schools Program), the weekly library lessons will be providing field knowledge opportunities and Guided Inquiry research activities for the subsequent HSIE unit on Australian Federation.

By way of orientation, I have found these introductory Youtube clips:


A continent for a nation – Australian Federation.


Australia – A Federation in stamps.

This next clip is certainly both persuasive and irreverent in nature:


A brief history of Australia.

We are not sure what our final product might be, but these clips may well generate some discussion of the myriad of possibilities.