* Gold!



Gold! is a package of reading material at three successive levels of difficulty to encourage timid readers to go beyond their normal comfort zone.  We use the terms Easy, Medium and Hard, rather than the more conventional professional terms to distinguish the three levels because students know these simple words and are not distracted from the text trying to work out the meanings of more difficult terms.

The text covers the history of gold in Australia, including discovery, early mining methods, problems on the goldfields, including the Eureka Stockade and anti-Chinese riots, and gold in Australia today.


 
Illustration
pp.6, 29 and 52
 


 Easy text

Thousands of men
left their jobs to look for gold. 
They came from Australia
and many other countries.



 Medium text
 

Thousands of men left their jobs
and rushed to look for gold.
They came from other areas in Australia and from many other countries.
Victoria had about 77,000 people in 1850 but ten years later
there were about 540,000 people.

 

Hard text
 

Men from all over Australia and from many other parts of the world abandoned their jobs and rushed to seek their fortunes in
the new goldfields.  Sailors deserted their ships when they
arrived in Sydney and Melbourne and the stranded ships were
used as accommodation for new immigrants.  The population of Australia quadrupled within ten years.  Victoria had the greatest increase, from about 77,000 to 540,000 people within the decade.

The reading texts are accompanied by Gold! Workbook which contains:

  • notes for teachers
  • additional background information on the history of the goldrush era and on modern gold mining techniques
  • photocopiable stimulus pictures
  • bibliography
  • photocopiable exercises at three levels with suggested answers.


There is also an audio CD to support students who like to "read along" and to help with general listening and detailed auditory processing problems.  As well as the texts read by Lyndal Reid, an extremely experienced Australian ESL teacher, the CD contains The Gold Song, written by Lyndal Reid and John Davidson and performed by Keith Davidson to the tune of Waltzing Matilda.

Gold!  ISBN 0 9757593 0 2

Gold! Workbook  ISBN 0 9757593 1 0

Gold! sound CD  ISBN 0 9757593 2 9

For copies of package, see list of bookshops under Available from.





Subpages (1): * Australian Government
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