|
|
GOOD GUYS, BAD GUYS? |
Adapted from the Making History Primary Unit: “Ned Kelly: Hero or
Villain?” |
|
This
is a unit of work within the framework of the Essential Learnings. It was
a 2004 Commonwealth History Project. It was done by Fran Read and the Grade
5/6 class at Orford Primary School. It took about 6 weeks to complete. |
|
Aims and Objectives of
our Project
- Students will learn about the
Bushranger period of Australian History.
- They will discover who the
bushrangers were.
- Students will find out what
aspects of colonial society helped cause the rise in bushranging.
- They will form their own
opinion about whether the bushrangers were heroes or villains.
- Students will gain an
understanding of the concepts of 'heroes' and 'villains' and the
qualities they possess.
|
|
|
Focus
Essential |
 |
|
Understanding the past and creating
preferred futures. |
| |
|
Supporting Essentials |
|
Being Literate; Inquiry; Reflective
Thinking; Understanding Systems. |
|
|
The following activities are outlined in the order that they were
undertaken. |
| I
read aloud to the class from the book “Black Snake” by Carole Wilkinson
(ISBN 87637215X) . It received a “Children's Book Council of Australia :
Book of the Year Award” in 2003 for Information Books. This generated lots
of interesting discussion and speculation. We scraped together a book display on bushrangers,
including some offerings from the students’ own homes. This was very
popular for browsing in reading times. |
 |
|
 |
In groups of three and four students discussed Ned
Kelly’s childhood and jotted down things that might have influenced his
future actions. The question was “What went wrong?” We mounted a display
for further discussion. |
|
Individually, students pondered the question: “Could
you end up in a similar situation to Ned?” Here are some of the things
that they wrote… |
|
I don’t think I could
turn out like Ned Kelly because I have a different lifestyle. In the
olden days they didn’t have TV or computers so they probably didn’t know
as much as we did. I’m not interested in killing people or robbing banks
and I don’t have to steal to keep my family from starving. I wouldn’t
like to upset my mum. |
|
I
couldn’t possibly grow up to be anything like Ned Kelly or any of his
family. I’d be too scared to point a gun at anybody, even my worst
enemy, and I wouldn’t even consider robbing a bank even if I had no
money. I’ve got better things to do with my precious time than
behaving like a savage. My family doesn’t drink all the time or
commit crimes so I have good example around me. I’m getting a
decent education and I’m learning more than Ned ever did.
|
|
I wouldn’t like to be on the run all the time so I
wouldn’t do the sort of things that Ned Kelly did. I am a much better
kind of person and I would hate people to be scared of me. Being a
criminal would be terrible. I would not take anywhere near as many
risks as Ned took. |
|
|
 |
We watched and discussed the video “Outlawed: The Real Ned Kelly” which
was available from the State Library. We studied the artwork of Sydney
Nolan and students produced their own “Sydney Nolan style” paintings.
|
|
The reliability of information was of major concern in all studies.
Inspired by the fact that there were seven different versions of the same
event offered by witnesses in the incident with Ned’s sister and the
Constable Fitzpatrick, students wrote their own version of being a
witness. |
|
We used the scenario of an incident in the school playground and they
described what they “saw”. This was such fun that we combined lots of
ideas and together wrote a skit about reliable witnesses. The class
performed it at our whole school assembly. Here is a small part. |
 |
|
I saw it all over my back fence. The Principal
of the school opened up the sandpit and yelled his lungs out.
(He often does that sort of thing.) I was puttering around the
garden (minding my own business) so I went over to the fence to have
a closer look. There was a grubby looking child of about six
asleep in the sandpit. The Principal then shouted, “Freddy, my boy!
I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” It sounded a bit odd to me
but everything about that school is a bit odd! |
|
What colour was this boy’s hair? |
|
Definitely blond. |
|
Thank you Mrs Snoop. Now I have one of the Grade 5/6 students,
Aaron Parker, who was right there at the scene. Aaron can you tell
us what happened? |
|
I was playing soccer like I always do and
then the music played. I had to help close the sandpit. I saw this
boy who was definitely dead, lying inside the sandpit. Just in case
he was dangerous, I hit him over the head with a shovel that was
lying next to him. And he was definitely dead. I buried him in the
sandpit, which is what anybody would have done under the
circumstances. I hope I don’t get a detention. |
|
Er, right, Aaron. Had you ever seen this boy before? |
|
|
We then branched out to
studying the lives of other bushrangers. Initially the plan was to
just focus on Tasmanian bushrangers but we quickly expanded this to any
Australian bushrangers. Students took a bushranger each to research. I
provided the questions that I wanted them to focus on. I printed out some
basic bushranger profiles from a very useful website (so that all students
had a starting point) and set them to find answers to the questions. |
|
 |
After they had made a certain
amount of written notes they were allowed to use the internet for further
information. I used parent helpers to assist me going through the research
notes in person with each student so that they could be helped in the
areas they were finding difficult. These projects were then
presented in written form under very strict guidelines. |
|
Here are some students' ongoing evaluations of their
research. |
|
I’m really
happy with my research and it’s fun to do. The hard bit is reading all
the information and writing it down in your own words but I have enjoyed
it a lot. I like reading the exciting parts like how Harry Power became
a bushranger. I have found out lots of things. |
| |
|
I am very interested in the bushranger I’m
researching. Her name was Mary Ann Bugg and she was the girlfriend of
Captain Thunderbolt. She had a really weird life, which makes her
interesting in every way. I am putting lots of effort into my research
because I am enjoying it so much even though the written information
that I have is
often hard to read. |
| |
|
I have put in a lot of effort reading through
information and looking at books. It’s been good but the information is
pretty hard to find. My bushranger was definitely a villain. I find it
a bit hard to concentrate sometimes because a person who sits near me
is always complaining about how hard hers is! But I’m happy with my own
research so far. Mine was a bit of a demon! |
|
|
After a reading general comprehension exercise and completing a wordsearch
on “The Wild Colonial Boy” students were keen enough to request the guitar
chords and we learnt the song. |
|
 |
|
We then added some speaking parts between verses and performed this for a
school assembly. Much fun was had by all. As well as public
performances samples of the students’ work appeared regularly in our school
newsletters. Parents commented on the high interest level that this was
generating throughout the whole school.
|
| With
the promise of our $1,000 History Grant, we purchased a JVC Digital Video
camera, complete with tripod and accessories. It came to exactly
$999.00. Then
we set about learning how to use it! |
 |
| For our
culminating performance we
invented a TV show called “Good Guys, Bad Guys”, in which an intrepid interviewer
called “Adelia Arskalott interviewed characters, dead or alive, with
the view of discovering whether they were heroes or villains. |
|
 |
Noteworthy
appearances were made by Martin Cash, Mary Ann Bugg and Alexander Pearce,
among others. A few non-bushrangers were interviewed as well and a studio audience was also involved. It was an excellent way
for students to air their knowledge and teach others a bit about the
bushranger they had studied. Much fun was had by all! |
|
So, were they good guys or bad guys? This is
what some students had to say. |
| Mary
Ann Bugg
was a sad case really because she had three children before she even
turned twenty. I think things would have been very different for her
if she hadn't fallen in love with a bushranger and joined him. She
was probably more of a villain. She certainly wasn't a hero. |
I think that Larry Cummins was probably quite a good
person even though he did do some bad things. To start with, when he
shot at the policemen he was really just trying to save his brother but he
shot his own brother by accident. That would have been awful for him and
that’s about when all his trouble started. He escaped from gaol a few
times later on so he probably ended up being bad. I think he was both
good and bad. |
I
think that Captain Thunderbolt was a villain because he really had no
right to kill those poor innocent people. He probably thought he was
doing the right thing but I don't and I'm sure lots of other people in our
class would agree with me. |
|
This
unit of work was a great success. The overall aims and objectives were
easily met. Students learnt a lot and thoroughly enjoyed themselves as well.
The video camera was a bonus! |
|
