Cranberry sauce

• Ask students to think about their own experiences with food and its role in cultural celebrations. Prompt students with questions about their own lives:

1. What foods are important to the cultural celebrations that they take part in? 
2. Who is involved in preparing these foods?
3. Who shares this food?

• Ask students the following questions:

1. What is the importance of the shared experience of cultural celebration?
2. How is food is used as a form of ritual in many celebratory events?

• The following websites may be useful:

1. Better Health Channel, 'Food and celebrations',http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/food_and_celebrations?open/ 
2. ——'Food Culture and Religion', http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Food_culture_and_religion?open/ 
3. Favorite Traditions.com, 'Holiday Food Traditions from Around the World', http://www.favoritetraditions.com/holidayfoodtraditions.html/
4. Essortment, 'Holiday Ethnic Food Traditions From Around The World', http://www.essortment.com/holiday-ethnic-food-traditions-around-world-65203.html/
5. Food and Culture Resources, http://www.food-links.com/
6. Australia's Culture Portal, 'Australian food and drink', http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/foodanddrink/

• Ask students to research a celebratory meal from a different culture. Students should find a recipe for a food that is used to celebrate a special cultural event. Prompt students to reflect on how food is used by immigrants to maintain their connection in a new land with their original cultural identity.

• Ask students to create a web page, Word document or poster about the food used in a cultural celebration. They should include the following information:

1. A step by step recipe.
2. Illustrations showing how the food is prepared and served. 
3. A description of the importance of the food in the cultural celebration.

• Students could work in small groups to set up a mini-international food festival. Each group would be responsible for cooking a dish based on their researched recipe.

Student Activity Sheet H16.1: Celebratory foods

• As a class, create a mind map exploring what students know about the gold rushes in Australia.
• Discuss what life might have been like for a young person like Ben living on the goldfields. Prompt students with the following questions.

1. What would it have been like to move so many times?
2. What kind of schooling would Ben have had?

• The following websites may be useful:

1. Australia's Culture Portal, 'The Australian Gold Rush' http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/goldrush
2. SBS, 'Gold!' http://www.sbs.com.au/gold
3. State Library of Victoria, 'Golden Victoria', http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/ergo/golden_victoria_NEW 
4. State Library of Victoria, 'Golden Victoria: The People: Children' http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/ergo/children 
5. Sovereign Hill, http://www.sovereignhill.com.au/

• In pairs or small groups, ask students to undertake the following tasks:

1. Label a map of Australia with the place names and dates of major gold discoveries. 
2. Write a list of key events in the discovery of gold in Australia.
3. Make a list of the nationalities of the people who came to Australia in search of gold. 
4. Find out how long the gold rushes lasted for.

• Ask students to imagine a box containing personal souvenirs that Ben might have collected over the course of his family's journeys. Have students create a poster about different items that Ben might have found while living and travelling from one goldfield to another. Students should contemplate the transitory nature of Ben's life and reflect upon how each collected item would need to be small and easily transported.
• As an extension activity, students could write a first-person description of each object without using its name. The class could then guess the object from its description read aloud by one of the students.

Student Activity Sheet H.16.2: Gold fever