Digital Classroom | National Library of Australia (NLA)

Digital Classroom

Explore Australia's history at the National Library's Digital Classroom, aligned with the Australian Curriculum. With over 10 million items, we support diverse learning styles, fostering inquiry-based learning for students to analyse sources and draw conclusions about the Australian story.
Showing 25 - 30 of 30 results
Dancers standing, crouching, and laying down holding balloons

Samuel Cooper & Adam Linder, Dancers on stage during dress rehearsal of Sydney Dance Company's Are we that we are, Sydney Theatre, Sydney, 2010, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-132086627

Dance

Topic

The history of dance performance in Australia, as with all the performing arts, precedes the arrival of settlers from other nations.

Arts
Year 5
Year 6
Performing arts
Kylie Minogue wearing a red dress and with her arms in the air

Matthew Sleeth, Australian singer Kylie Minogue performs at the Tour of Duty concert at Dili Stadium, East Timor, 21 December 1999, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-147368307

Music

Topic

One of the world’s oldest music traditions that is still performed is the bunggul ceremony. This can be seen annually at the Garma Festival held in Gulkula, a sacred site in north-east Arnhem Land. The Garma Festival runs for four days and observes the traditions and customs of the Yolngu people.

Arts
Year 5
Year 6
Performing arts
man working on huge gears

Wolfgang Sievers, The gears gears for the mining industry, Vickers Ruwolt, Burnley, Melbourne, 1967, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-136505226

Documenting modern Australia

Module

This resource is aligned to the Australian Curriculum: Design and Technologies standards for Year 5 and 6. It draws on the Library’s Wolfgang Sievers Collection to explore how photography, design and industry have transformed modern Australia, encouraging students to investigate how technologies are developed, used, and understood in social and environmental contexts.

Humanities
Technologies
Year 5
Year 6
Architecture and design
Art, drawing and illustration
Photography
Science and technology
stacks of aluminium profiles

 Wolfgang Sievers, Aluminium profiles at Comalco's plant at Yennora, New South Wales, 1965, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-160295127

Modernism

Topic

Modernism was a cultural movement that influenced visual arts, architecture, music, literature and design in the first half of the twentieth century.

Humanities
Technologies
Year 5
Year 6
Architecture and design
Photography
Science and technology
Man leaning against gate

Wolfgang Sievers, [Photograph of Wolfgang Sievers], Berlin, Germany, 1991, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-161009403

Wolfgang Sievers

Topic

Wolfgang Georg Sievers, AO (1913–2007) was a well-known modernist photographer who documented Australian architecture and industry over a career spanning almost 60 years.

Humanities
Technologies
Year 5
Year 6
Architecture and design
Photography
Science and technology
National Gallery of Victoria forecourt

Wolfgang Sievers, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne - Forecourt with Rodin's Balzac, 1968, nla.gov.au/nla.obj-160765377

Documenting modernity

Topic

Sievers’ work is a pictorial timeline showing Australia’s social, technological and industrial transformation.

Humanities
Technologies
Year 5
Year 6
Architecture and design
Photography
Science and technology

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