Australian Gold Rush Unit Plan

This Australian Gold Rush unit plan consists of 9 lessons of approximately 60-minutes duration, with the opportunity for multi-session student activities. The complete unit plan investigates the historical discovery of Australia’s Gold Rush period, from the mid-to-late 1800s. Ideas featured in this unit include the discovery of gold, mining lifestyle, wealth and success, social consequences and how these shaped the Australia we live in today.

The sequence of lessons and suggested time frames should be regarded as a guide only; teachers should pace lessons in accordance with the individual learning needs of their class.

A knowledge check for monitoring student understanding of the unit objectives is included and will require an additional lesson.

Teachers are encouraged to collect samples of students’ work throughout the unit to add to a learning portfolio. These can also be used to assess students’ understanding of the unit objectives.

What’s in the Australian Gold Rush Unit Plan?

Consisting of 9 x 60-minute lessons, this curriculum-aligned unit plan gives students the opportunity to:

• learn about gold as a mineral, why it is sought after, and how it became a valuable currency
• use mapping skills to track the discovery of gold across Australia and learn how those discoveries formed and changed Australia’s cities and landscapes
• learn what it was like to live as a miner on the goldfields
• learn how events during the gold rush influenced Australian laws, taxes, equality and voting rights, and how they shaped our current democracy
• consider the lives and roles of Australian Aboriginal peoples during the gold rush
• learn about the influence different cultures had on Australia, the challenges newcomers faced, and how they made Australia what it is today
• learn about the Eureka Stockade and how it affected life for miners and changed Australia’s political outlook.

There’s nothing mine-or about that!