The activities support the Victorian Curriculum F-10. The kit is suited to levels 3–9 across a variety of domains including Intercultural Capabilities, History, Civics Citizenship and Geography.

Teachers can familiarise themselves with the kit before it arrives by viewing some examples of kit objects and reading the migration stories.

 

Before the kit arrives

Objects tell a Story

Ask students to look at an object in their classroom and/or bring a significant object from home. Discuss the idea that objects can tell stories.

• What is the object, and what is it used for?
• What is it made from?
• Where might it have come from?
• How old is it?
• Who does it belong to? What story can it tell?
• Why did you select this object to share with the class? Why is it important to you?
• Use the Small Object, Big Story online resource to assist students in investigating their own objects and stories.
• Use a shared class account on a photo service to create a photographic record of your items. Create captions, using the answers to the questions above, to label the images.

Immigration to Australia

Use some of these questions to lead a discussion around the concept of immigration to Australia.

• Why do people come to Australia?
• How do people come to Australia?
• What countries do people come from? What is the origin/s of your own family and why did they come to Australia? When and how did they come to Australia?
• Have students investigate and share their own journeys to Australia or the journeys made by their families/ancestors. Possible activities could include making a map, doing a poster display or a creating a performance.
• Invite people (parents, grandparents, school volunteers) who have come from overseas to speak to the class.
• Students can interview members of their families or friends who have come from overseas. The Making History website provides many useful tips for conducting interviews and recording family history.

Activities with the learning kit

A First Look at the Kit

Take the objects/photographs out of the kit. Look at each object and consider these questions:

• What is the object, and what is it used for?
• What is it made from? Is it animal, plant or mineral based?
• Where might it have come from? Why do you think that?
• How old is it? How could we find out?
• Who does it belong to? What story can it tell? Do you or your family own something similar?
• Why is it in the kit? Why is it important?
• How much is it worth? How much would you pay for it? Why might an object be more valuable to one person than it is to another?

Object Life Stories Activity

• Display the objects in five groups, one for each immigrant. Read or have students read the stories to the class.
• Discuss how, when and where each object relates to the story of its owner.
• Find more information about each object, person or the countries they migrated from in the "Further reading" section on each person’s profile. 

Using the objects in the case and/or other objects.

• Develop questions about each object, group of objects, or a part of a person's story.
• Categorise the items into types. E.g. handmade, clothing, documents. photographs. What items would you take if your family was to migrate?
• Use these links for useful strategies for creating effective questions:
• Visible thinking See Think Wonder Routine
• Inquire Within Blog
• Write a narrative or report based on the objects, the people, the countries of origin and cultural events or on your own family history.

What’s Your Story? Exhibition At Your School

The objects in the kit and/or other objects can be displayed in many ways. This is the work of the exhibitions team at Melbourne Museum, Scienceworks and the Immigration Museum.

You may wish to create your own exhibition at your school. You might like to include objects from people in your class, parents or grandparents in your exhibition. When developing your exhibition decide who will do which task, for example, what are the themes of your exhibition? How will you set up the object displays, and why? When writing labels, what information do you need to describe each object?

The questions below will help you to set up you own exhibition:

• What is the story or message of your exhibition?
• Whose story will you include? How many objects will you display?
• Where will you display your objects? Classroom, school hall, library or corridor?
• How long will your exhibition be open, what times? Will you do exhibition tours? Will the exhibition have a catalogue (book with photographs and information about each object)? Can you put some of the exhibition online as well?
• The Small Object Big Story website gives you more information about how to set up an exhibition.
• An online service like Flickr is an excellent way to build an online exhibition. Include photographs of the objects and have students tags and labels the items.

Exhibition jobs

• Arrange space for exhibition
• Set up display of objects
• Write labels for objects
• Display photographs
• Write catalogue (book with photographs and information about each object)
• Plan guided tours of your exhibition
• Advertise your exhibition
• Write reviews of your exhibition (for school newsletter, website or blog)
• Photographer
• Security
• Ticket sales

Making History online resource can assist students to investigate objects in the kit or their own objects and stories and make movies about them.

Taking it Further

What is a Museum?

Discuss the concept of museums:

• Who has been to a museum? What is a museum?
• What is their purpose?
• Who works in a museum? Curators, conservators, teachers, historians? 
• What can museums tell us about science and history?
• Visit the Immigration Museum website.

Further Study of Migration

• Use these Museum Victoria websites to explore immigration from one country:
• Immigration Timeline
• Journeys to Australia
• Immigration Museum Cultural Festival
• For example, to follow the story of Cambodian immigration:
• Check 1960s on the Immigration Timeline
• then explore the 1940s-60s on Journeys to Australia
• Go to the playlist of past Immigration Museum Cultural Festivals and watch the Cambodia festival video

Collecting Objects at the Museum

Museum Victoria's Migration and Cultural Diversity Collection records the different cultures of Victoria's population since European settlement in the 1830s and contains over 6200 items. Each item has a unique story and provides insight into the lives of the people who used it.

For a new object to join the collection it needs to be significant and important. Curators need to record and research each object in the collection so that others can learn about the object as well. Items usually have to be stored in cool temperatures and dry conditions. Sometimes they need to be repaired or preserved in some way; this is the job of a person called a conservator. A fraction of the museum's collections are displayed for the public in the galleries but many objects can be viewed online at Museums Victoria Collections.

Victorian Curriculum Links

The Learning Areas addressed by the ‘What’s Your Story’ kit, are all identified in the Victorian Curriculum F-10: Home - Victorian Curriculum (vcaa.vic.edu.au)

 Learning Area: Intercultural Capability

Intercultural Capability - Rationale and Aims - Victorian Curriculum (vcaa.vic.edu.au)

Intercultural interactions have become a part of everyday life in our increasingly multicultural and globalised world. Developing intercultural knowledge, skills and understandings is an essential part of living with others in the diverse world of the twenty-first century. The Intercultural capability curriculum assists young people to become responsible local and global citizens, equipped for living and working together in an interconnected world.

 Learning Area: Humanities - Civics and Citizenship

Civics and Citizenship - Rationale and Aims - Victorian Curriculum (vcaa.vic.edu.au)

Civics and Citizenship is essential in enabling students to become active and informed citizens who participate in and sustain Australia’s democracy. Through the study of Civics and Citizenship, students investigate political and legal systems, and explore the nature of citizenship, diversity, and identity in contemporary society. They gain the knowledge and skills necessary to question, understand and contribute to the world in which they live.

 The Civics and Citizenship curriculum recognises that Australia is a secular democratic nation with a multicultural and multi-faith society and promotes the development of inclusivity by developing students’ understanding of broader values such as respect, civility, equity, justice, and responsibility. It acknowledges the experiences and contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their identities within contemporary Australia. While the curriculum strongly focuses on the Australian context, students also reflect on Australia’s position, and obligations, and the role of the citizen today within an interconnected global world.

Learning Area: Humanities – History

History - Rationale and Aims - Victorian Curriculum (vcaa.vic.edu.au)

History is a disciplined process of investigation into the past that develops students' curiosity and imagination. Awareness of history is an essential characteristic of any society, and historical knowledge is fundamental to understanding ourselves and others. It promotes the understanding of societies, events, movements, and developments that have shaped humanity from earliest times. It helps students appreciate how the world and its people have changed, as well as the significant continuities that exist to the present day. History, as a discipline, has its own methods and procedures which make it different from other ways of understanding human experience. The study of history is based on evidence derived from remains of the past. It is interpretative by nature, promotes debate and encourages thinking about human values, including present and future challenges. The study of history also provides opportunities to develop transferable skills of critical and creative thinking, such as the ability to explore questions, imagine possibilities and construct arguments.

Learning Area: Humanities – Geography

Geography - Rationale and Aims - Victorian Curriculum (vcaa.vic.edu.au)

The geography curriculum presents a structured way of exploring, analysing, and understanding the characteristics of the places that make up our world, using the concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale, and change. It addresses scales from the personal to the global and time periods from a few years to thousands of years.

Geography as a discipline integrates the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities to build a holistic understanding of the world.