Gold Gold Gold!

By Leo Wanders (5/6 teacher)

No, it’s not the Olympics, not the Commonwealth Games, not even the World Championships or any other competition for that matter, but the 5/6’s journey into the world of this much sought after precious metal and its effect on the nation of Oz around the 1850’s.

Q. How do you give eager learners an insight into the way gold affected people at the time of the Gold Rush?

A. Create your own ‘gold rush’.

Here’s how it works: 

Open up the doors between the 3 classrooms, place ‘gold’ (chocolate coins covered in gold foil) in all manner of places in the rooms, have all the students stand at one door, tell them ‘There’s gold in them thar hills’, open the doors and watch the ensuing mayhem. 

And mayhem it was, yet in a small way, the students ‘tasted’ some of the issues and effects of the discovery of gold in Victoria. There was a mad rush with lots of pushing and shoving, at the door and beyond, by students eager to get onto the ‘goldfields’, to the point where some student fell over just inside the door and were stepped over by others. There were the familiar cries of ‘That’s not fair, I haven’t found any gold’, ‘They have more than me’, ‘I saw that gold first’ and ‘Look how much I have’. Some looked only for the alluvial gold, others ‘dug deeper’ being rewarded for their hard work while a number worked in teams to increase the chances of becoming ‘wealthy’. 

Couple that with the roaming ‘Police’ (aka the Teachers) asking students how much they had found and then simply taking some for themselves, not being able to hear over the noise of the crowd, students looking in the same places as others had already looked, students taking risks by climbing the lockers to search the high places and the inevitable boasting and complaining and you have an idea …. well… need I say more?

Debriefing and discussion followed, ‘stolen’ gold was returned and those who didn’t ‘waste’ their gold were rewarded with some free time for being sensible.

But wait …… there’s more. Let me tell you about our uber-excursion to Sovereign Hill!! (I’ll be brief ‘cause we packed so much into one day):

70 students, 11 adults, 2 big buses, 8.00am departure from school, a day on ‘the diggings’ at Sovereign Hill, 46 pizzas in the park at Ballarat at 5.15pm, back to Sovereign Hill for Blood on the Southern Cross at 6.15pm, depart Ballarat at 8.30pm, watch a movie on the buses, delicious and extravagant supper back at school at 10.30pm (which also became recess on Monday), some sleep, BBQ breakfast at 7.45am, home and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz (probably only by the grown-ups).  

The learning was rich, the pizzas many and the day rewarding.

Did I mention our Goldfield dioramas? No? Have a look at these fabulous student-ic creations of their own version of what the goldfield and gold mines may have looked like. 

I wish I could finish this paragraph with Shalom but that’s still 2 sleeps away.