Secondary schools

Using a range of primary sources, students investigate Aboriginal Australians’ rights and freedoms in first half of the twentieth century and the Freedom Ride that took place in NSW in February 1965.

Students work closely with graphic materials and newspaper articles from WWI, analysing how recruitment and conscription paraphernalia and news reports reveal the values and attitudes of people at that time.

Students investigate a range of primary sources in order to better understand the changing lives of the Australian women who served in World War I. 

Celebrate the dynamic identities of four Aboriginal Elders from the Sydney Elders exhibition and conduct a case study with Elders from your own community. 

Students study a set of photographs and create their own sequence of images to educate young adults to change attitudes or behaviour. They then use their five images to create a dramatic presentation or tableau vivant.

Students learn about ‘tall tales’ and use images from the collection to compose their own tall tale.

Students locate and sequence the places where Australians fought in WWI. They examine sources to understand the nature of warfare during the Gallipoli campaign.

Students explain how the beliefs and values of the ancient society are evident in practices related to warfare, death and funery customs.

Students use sources to identify and describe significant developments and cultural achievements of Medieval Europe.

Students complete a digital site study using digitised collection materials from the State Library’s collection that relate to the Devonshire Street Cemetery.  

Students investigate the holocaust and Muriel Knox Doherty, matron of the liberated Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.

Students analyse the drawings by Mickey of Ulladulla and investigate how life changed for Aboriginal people as a result of British colonisation.

Students learn about the life of Mary Reibey and her experiences from convict to free settler.

Through analysis of a collection of sources related to the lives of Alan and Dene Fry, students consider the motivation of soldiers to enlist and fight in WWI, and the impact of the war on the families left behind. 

Students will investigate the evidence provided by a cuneiform tablet dating from c. 1860 BCE, and investigate the emergence of writing, one of the defining characteristics of the ancient civilisation of Sumer.

Students consider a number of accounts of the Battle of the Wasser from different primary sources and consider what effect this event might have on the Anzac legend.