Non-Fiction Level 3-4 - Early Days in Sydney Town: Session 2
Session 2: Reread the text, dig deeper
Sample text: Early Days in Sydney Town (PDF - 35Kb)
Reread the text
The students reread the text and explore some of the ideas in relation to other ideas in greater depth. They learn that rereading the chapter allows them to understand it more comprehensively. It helps students to link ideas that they didn’t on the first reading and to develop a broader comprehension. It also alerts them to other materials that are either online or in hard copy form.
Student learning activities
Activity 1
Students talk about the images they form of aspects of the text. Example activities:
- ‘Imagine you were a passenger on one of the First Fleet ships. What would it have been like on the trip to Port Jackson?’
- ‘Imagine you were a passenger on one of the First Fleet ships. Describe your first impression of Port Jackson.’
- ‘Suppose you were in Port Jackson in 1788 when you saw the ‘Supply’ leaving to take convicts to Norfolk Island. How would you have felt?’
Activity 2
Students respond to questions about the literal information provided. Example task: students integrate literal information across the paragraphs.
Activity 3
Students ask questions and respond to inferential questions that require them to go further. Example task: students infer across the paragraphs and respond to questions such as, ‘The text doesn’t answer these questions. If it did, what you think it would say? Why does the text say, “Surprisingly, few died over the eight month trip”? What do you think were some of the things Governor Phillip tried to get started first when the ships arrived at Port Jackson? If the newcomers had been able to communicate with the aborigines, what could the aborigines have told them? What do you think the aborigines might have thought about the ways in which the early settlers were trying to set up a new life?’
Activity 4
Students summarise the main events that occurred in the text. Example task: students rearrange each string of words below into a sentence; they rearrange the sentences to summarise the text; and put in the correct punctuation marks.
- needed the keep in Britain were jails and she a crowded place overseas to them
- believed Holland Captain the East place Coast of was a settlement suitable new for a new Cook
- the Fleet Captain First led by Phillip was
- the many settlement problems had early new
- the soil Sydney suitable not Cove around for crops was growing.
Activity 5
Students suggest questions the text answers. Example task: students link each of the following answers with the correct question.
Answers:
- Convicts and marines went to Norfolk Island to set up another penal colony.
- The settlers found the local plants hard to eat and were generally poor fishermen.
- Better land for farming was found along the Parramatta River at Rose Hill.
- After more than two years of isolation and near starvation, the settlement at Sydney Cove began to grow its own food.
Questions:
- Why was it important to grow crops at Rose Hill on the Parramatta River?
- When did the settlement at Sydney Cove begin to become self-sufficient?
- How did the settlement at Sydney Cove begin to become self-sufficient?
- Where were crops grown successfully?
- To where were convicts taken from Sydney Cove?
- Why did the newcomers need to be supplied with food by ship?
- Were the settlers good at growing local plants?
- How did marines and convicts get to Norfolk Island?
Activity 6
Students suggest synonyms for key words. For example, students suggest synonyms for ‘self sufficient’, ‘wary‘, ‘nutritious‘, ‘unsuitable‘, ‘rudimentary’, ‘infertile‘ and ‘supplemented’.
Activity 7
Students extend their knowledge of the topic. They could pursue the following topics using online or hard copy information sources. Example activities:
- First Fleet chronology - What is the timeline for the settlement at Port Jackson? Examine the time line of the First Fleet from 1776–1792. Explore how it fits with the American War of Independence that began in1776, when the former American colonies refused to accept British convicts.
- First Fleet rations - Examine the food rations from 26 January 1788 until 3 June 1790. What was the food supply like in the colony in the first two years? What did the early settlers eat? Was their diet suitable for life in the colony?
- National Library of Australia - Thomas Watling - What can paintings of the early days of the colony tell us about what it was like? One early convict artist was Thomas Watling (1762–c.1814). Watling was sentenced to 14 years in Australia in 1792 for forging a bank note. He developed the largest single collection of early colonial art. Many of his works were landscapes and natural history drawings and portraits of Aboriginal people. One of his paintings, A Direct North General View of Sydney Cove shows the colony in 1794, seven years after settlement. It is the earliest oil painting of Sydney.
- National Library of Australia - James Cook’s Endeavour journal - How was the east coast of Australia explored and mapped by Captain Cook? Read his personal account of the voyage of HMB Endeavour from 1768 to 1771 where he also gives an account of making contact with Aboriginal Australians.
- National Library of Australia - Lord Morton - Cook’s trip was sponsored by the Royal Society. The President of the Royal Society, Lord Morton, gave Cook the following advice: to treat the indigenous people he encountered with respect and to communicate peacefully with them; avoid unnecessary use of firearms; and to accept that ’the indigenous inhabitants are the natural and… the legal possessors of the several regions they inhabit.’ Read the advice and decide if Cook had followed Lord Morton’s hints, would he have taken possession of the east coast of Australia for Great Britain? What would be outcomes of taking this advice?
- Resources for 19th Century British Social History - What were living conditions in England (wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/guides/arts/brithist.html) like in the 1780s when the British government felt the need to establish a settlement in New Holland?
- University of Adelaide library - The Settlement at Port Jackson - What was it like living at Port Jackson when ‘Lady Juliana’, the first ship of the Second Fleet, arrived? Read an eyewitness account by marine Captain Watkin Tench, taken from his book A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales.
- Imagining the Aboriginal People - How were Aboriginal people portrayed by the new arrivals? The early artists differed in their approach. Some showed them skilfully going about their way of life while others painted them through Eurocentric eyes. Examine these early paintings and photographs and think about how these different ways of representing the inhabitants of Australia influenced how the visitors thought about them.
- How did Captain Phillip see the journey to the east coast of Australia? Read his Impressions and an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island
Project Gutenberg of Australia provides a very rich set of online resources relating to Australian History.
Gutenberg Australian History
When searching online for relevant information students should:
- Identify key words for implementing a search. Students work out possible key words by asking various questions about the topic. For example:
- How did the visitors travel? The First Fleet.
- Where did they end up? Sydney Cove, Port Jackson.
- When did they travel? 1788.
- Who travelled? Captain Phillip, convicts.
- What was the purpose? To find new land.
- Why did they travel? To set up a penal colony.
- When students open a page, they should skim and scan it to decide:
- Is it relevant to their questions?
- How is the information organised? If it has several sources of information such as tables, maps and pictorial data, how will they combine them?
- What questions does it seem to answer?
- How will they manage and direct their reading?
- As students read through the text, they should decide how to:
- Summarise and identify the questions answered by each paragraph.
- Keep track of key information, for example, by writing down key ideas.
- Review and consolidate each paragraph.
- Link up ideas across paragraphs.
- Decide when to pursue other (new) links.
- When students have read a page, they should review and consolidate what they now know and decide:
- Whether they need to reread parts of the page.
- Whether they will pursue particular links provided.
- Which information to save.
Consolidate and review
When students have read the text, the teacher leads students to apply each of the After Reading Strategies to review and consolidate the text as a whole.
Student learning activities
Activity 1
Students review the main ideas in the text. For example, students respond to questions such as, ‘Describe the mental videotape you have made of the first two years of living in the European settlement at Sydney Cove? What are the main things that happened?’
Activity 2
Students link positive emotional response with the text as a whole. For example, students respond to questions such as, ‘Did you enjoy reading about the early European settlement at Sydney Cove? How useful or interesting were the ideas? How could the text have grabbed your attention better?’
Activity 3
Students review their understanding of the text as a whole. Example task: students respond to questions such as, ‘What did the text tell me? The text didn’t say this but if …?, Students respond to questions that examine their understanding of the text as a whole such as, ‘How do you think the settlers decided the land around Sydney Cove was not good for growing crops? Why was it important for the settlement to become self-sufficient as soon as possible? Why do you think most of the First Fleet ships left the colony soon after arriving? How do you think the newcomers in Sydney learnt that the ’Syrius‘had been wrecked? The young colony did not have links with the outside world for several months while the two ships were away. How would you feel if you were in the colony at that time?’
Activity 4
Students decide why the text was written. Example task: students reflect on and respond to questions such as, ‘Why was the text written? Did it say what I expected it to say? How well did it achieve its purpose?’
Activity 5
Students describe how the text could be interpreted from different points of view or perspectives. They decide what techniques were used to influence the reader to take a particular interpretation. Example task: students respond to questions such as, ‘If you were a member of one of the indigenous communities living near Sydney Cove when the First Fleet arrived, what might you say? If you were a convict on the First Fleet, what might you have said about the first two years living in the settlement at Sydney Cove? Does the writer of Early Days in Sydney Town want you to think that the early settlement was a good idea or a bad idea? How does the language used in the text help you to decide this?’
Activity 6
Students review and evaluate the reading strategies used, particularly the strategies being learnt at the time. For example, students respond to questions such as, ‘What reading actions worked? What reading actions helped to you to read and comprehend the text about the early European settlement at Sydney Cove?’
Activity 7
Students store in memory what has been learnt. Example task: students reflect on and respond to questions such as, ‘What key new ideas have I learnt about the early European settlement at Sydney Cove? How has my knowledge changed? How do the new ideas fit with what I already knew?’ Students list the key things they want to remember about European settlement at Sydney Cove and list the questions they can now answer.
Activity 8
Students identify the new language and literacy knowledge that has been learnt. For example, students respond to questions such as, ‘What new ways of saying things have I learnt? What new words were in the text? What new words and ways of talking about ideas have I learnt from reading the text?’
Activity 9
Students automatise and practise reading similar text aloud and silently to achieve increased fluency. Example task: students practise reading aloud from the text Early Days in Sydney Town and related texts such as those located online.