Activity 2: Noteworthy people
This activity introduces students to the noteworthy people featured on the Australian banknotes and assists them to formulate and seek answers to research questions.
With students, make a list of the people and places represented on the banknotes. You could revisit the interactive Australian banknotes if necessary.
Ask students why they think these people and/or places were chosen to feature on the banknotes.
Introduce the noteworthy people digital book ( PDF 752KB) which provides basic biographical information for students. Discuss the title and what the word ‘noteworthy’ means. Look at the pictures and discuss who each person is. Talk about how this informative text conveys information about the person to the audience.
Students can also play the identity card game
( PDF 427KB)
and the Australian banknote matching game
( PDF 288KB)
Group students and allocate to each of the groups a person featured on a banknote. Each group will research the person allocated.
Assist students to compile a list of research questions
Assist students to compose appropriate ‘Who?’, ‘What?’, ‘When?’, ‘Where?’, ‘Why?’ research questions relating to the featured person. Consider questions such as:
- Who is the person on the banknote?
- Where did they grow up?
- Why did they come to Australia? (where appropriate)
- What banknote is the person featured on?
- When were they born?
- When did they die?
- What did they do?
- Why were they important?
- What did they contribute to Australia?
Allocate a question from the list to each group member giving consideration to the skills of individual students. Keep the questions for the next activity.
With each group read the section of Noteworthy people that is relevant to their research
Read the relevant sections of noteworthy people digital book . Students might also wish to read the information themselves. More detailed biographies might be read with students depending on their individual skills and knowledge.
Each student writes the answer to their question.
Assist groups to make a multimodal text
Discuss the noteworthy people digital book and its multimodality. Assist group members to collaborate and make a multimodal text with the information they have found about their noteworthy person. They could create a:
- text with images using digital software for collaboration
- sound recording accompanied by images and/or text
- short video that tells about the person. This could be a re-enactment of an event or interview or a report relating to the person
- PowerPoint presentation with images and text
- poster or book with images and text.
Each group presents their multimodal text to the class. Groups discuss what they learned while creating their texts.