Resource+3

**__Resource 3__**

Website: //Historic Houses Trust NSW// __http://www.hht.net.au/home__



**__Description of Resource:__** This resoruce is a website created by the Historic Houses Trust who are a statutory authority within the Office of Environment and Heritage in New South Wales. Their role is to care for key historic buildings and sites across New South Wales. Their website contains a wide range of information about the different buildings and sites that they are responsible for and how they are caring for them. The strategy that the Trust has used to maintain and preserve these sites is to turn them into museums which are open to the community and which showcase the incredible history of the site in order that people might see the significance of caring for such places. Their website also details upcoming events occurring at the sites and how the community can be involved in the restoration and preservation of these sites.

**__Relevance to Outcome:__** The mission statement for the Historic Houses Trust is: //To inspire appreciation of Australia's diverse histories and cultural heritage for present and future generations by conserving, interpreting and managing, with integrity, places of cultural significance, in the care of the Historic Houses Trust.// (Historic Houses Trust, 2011, para. 3) This statement directly links to the focus outcome for our unit of work as it is concerned with the way people interact with the environment and how this can be done in a responsible way (NSW Board of Studies, 2007, p.33). By using this website as a resource in the classroom, students are able to explore the possible ways of caring for an historic site by reading about what the Trust is currently doing. One aspect of particular relevance on the website is the page entitled //Endangered Houses Fund// which lists the different historical houses that seemed to be beyond preservation but which the Trust has fought to save. This page is significant for the students doing this unit of work because it models to them the type of emotive and desciptive language that professional writers use to convince a reader to agree with them and to work alongside them. As the rich task for this unit is to design a strategy for the care of a particular heritage site, this website would prove to be very helpful in firstly providing a model for how to go about caring for a site, and secondly, in showing the students effective techniques that will help to persuade their readers/viewers.

**__Aspect of Literacy to be Explored:__** Visual literacy and reading are the main aspects of literacy that can be explored through using this resource. Firstly, the visual nature of the website opens itself up to a critical look at the features and techniques used to present an attractive and convincing message. Students will be learning about visual literacy from the first few lessons of the unit as they look at historic photos of The Rocks and compare them with current photos. Therefore, by the sixth lesson when this website is used, students should be very familiar with the types of techniques used to convey meaning through visuals. The added complexity of this resource being a website and therefore involving text as well as visuals and moving graphics, should challenge the students in their understanding of how to critically view visual texts. This experience will be scaffolded by the teacher and so the students will be supported as they browse the website and attempt to identify different features of the text, both visual and written. The students will be encouraged to look critically at the text to select out the language features used to persuade or convince, which they will discover are subtle and hence very effective. This will aid them when they later are required to independently write an exposition on the topic of caring for heritage sites. This website will be beneficial in providing a good model of persuasive writing and through the use of a range of visual elements the students should be inspired to experiment with similar techniques in their own presentations.

__References: __

Board of Studies NSW. (2007). //Human society and its environment k-6 syllabus.// Sydney: Author

Board of Studies NSW. (2007). //English k-6 syllabus.// Sydney: Author

Historic Houses Trust NSW. (2011). //Historic houses trust: home. Retrieved October 3, 2011 from// __http://www.hht.net.au/home__