content-left-bg.png
content-right-bg.png

Year 5 - Colonial Brisbane

WebPartZone1_1
PublishingPageContent

​​​​Colonial Brisbane is a day Education Program at Brisbane’s Newstead House​. Through immersion in museum theatre and hands-on learning experiences, students experience life in the 1800s to gain an understanding of the role significant individuals and groups played in shaping a colony.

A suite of education experiences and activities are designed to inspire students to compare daily life in Brisbane in the 1840’s to daily life in Brisbane today.  Students, invited to be History Detectives, participate in activities including ‘Kate’s Garden’, ‘Wash Day Wonders’, ‘Mrs Fletchers Kitchen’ and ‘Games on the Green’ to experience life from the past. Students investigate Newstead House and formulate questions to discover what life was like for different social groups in Colonial Australia.

Specialised Theatre-in-Education actors set the scene, bring history alive and foster an emotional attachment to the place. As a result, students are motivated to continue to engage with Brisbane’s history and understand the importance of protecting heritage sites.


Curriculum Intent - Year 5

Humanities and Social Sciences

Inquiry and Skills
Questioning
Develop appropriate questions to guide an inquiry about people, events, developments, places, systems and challenges (ACHASSI094).

Researching
Locate and collect relevant information and data from primary sources and secondary sources (ACHASSI095)
Organise and represent data in a range of formats including tables, graphs and large and small scale maps, using discipline-appropriate conventions (ACHASSI096).
Sequence information about people’s lives, events, developments and phenomena using a variety of methods including timelines (ACHASSI097).

Analysing
Examine primary sources and secondary sources to determine their origin and purpose (ACHASSI098).
Examine different viewpoints on actions, events, issues and phenomena in the past and present (ACHASSI099).

Knowledge and Understanding
History
Reasons (economic, political and social) for the establishment of British colonies in Australia after 1800 (ACHASSK106).
The nature of convict or colonial presence, including the factors that influenced patterns of development, aspects of the daily life of the inhabitants (including Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples) and how the environment changed (ACHASSK107).
The role that a significant individual or group played in shaping a colony (ACHASSK110).

Geography
The environmental and human influences on the location and characteristics of a place and the management of spaces within them (ACHASSK113).

WebPartZone1_2
WebPartZone2_1
WebPartZone2_2
WebPartZone2_3
WebPartZone3_1
WebPartZone3_2
WebPartZone3_3
WebPartZone3_4
WebPartZone4_1
WebPartZone5_1
WebPartZone5_2
WebPartZone6_1
WebPartZone6_2
WebPartZone7_1
WebPartZone7_2
WebPartZone8_1
WebPartZone8_2
WebPartZone9_1
Last reviewed 24 October 2025
Last updated 24 October 2025