Watching the stars.

Indigenous perspectives- KLA focus HSIE Early Sea Explorers and SCIENCE Spinning in Space View Burarra gathering and complete task using the stars to go home. P.10 SIShttp://burarra.questacon.edu.au/hom e.html From the Science Primary Connections, each unit has Indigenous perspectives. This one was from Lesson 1 Our place in Space.

Aboriginal Astronomy. Indigenous people have been observing the sky for many thousands of years. Some still use the stars as a guide for hunting and gathering. This knowledge is preserved through storytelling, ceremony and art. Art and literacy focus using these ideas.

Whole class reading Activity. Read the interview from Message Stick with Bill (Yidumduma) Harney. stories/s htm (Extension activity with literacy group over several sessions.) Students will identify the different ways each culture looks at the stars. iginalAstronomy/Examples/SunMoon.htm

View the Darwin Festival lecture with elder Bill Yidumduma Harney and CSIRO astrophysicist Ray Norris recorded Discussion related to the different cultural perspectives. Used as a springboard for discussions around perspectives

Discussion around what life as a child in Australia may have been like a thousand years ago. Aboriginal children learn in their communities. The elders teach them ceremony, stories and creation songs.

Students work in groups over several sessions to re-create what it might have been like, to be an aboriginal family sitting around a fire and telling the stories that were seen in the stars. Students focus on narrative style, turn taking, how the stars were understood by aboriginal people and context.

Using the rock shelter in our school students re-create the stories in the rock shelter. The visit to the rock shelter also provides an opportunity to discuss local aboriginal communities and how they might have lived in our local area. It also provides an opportunity for exploration of features of rock shelters including, blackened ceilings, soot on the floor of the shelter, distance to the ocean in order to gather food and the types of foods in the bush that wouldve been used.