On Tuesday, Year 11 students from Cobden Technical School, Timboon P12 School, Derrinallum P12 and Hampden Specialist School spent the day visiting various sites within the Corangamite Shire Council with the purpose of developing their understanding of what the area of construction entails, and the career opportunities in this field. Tony McAuliffe, from GreenCon, alongside the NPL, planned an insightful day for the students, visiting GreenCon, Fonterra, a near completed rotary dairy on Hibberd’s Road, and an operational rotary dairy on Melrose Road. NPL appreciates all the hard work and prior planning Tony McAuliffe put in to make the day so successful for the students of the Corangamite Shire. Thank you to Beyond the Bell Great South Coast for sponsoring the buses for this program! Congratulations to Mark, Nina and everyone involved in Timboon's nomination and thanks to everyone who voted for Timboon in the Victoria Tourism Industry Council – VTIC Top Tourism Town Awards as Timboon is celebrated as the TINY TOWN GOLD WINNER 2024. Timboon P-12 School is proud to be a part of the town’s entry with reference to our tourism curriculum outcomes that demonstrated Timboon’s commitment to tourism and featured our 2023 Year 5/6 Geography students’ ‘Message from our future leaders’ BLOG on the visit12apostles website. Check it out - https://visit12apostles.com.au/explore/nature-wildlife/treasure-the-land-we-love/a-message-from-our-future-leaders/ The Year 3/4 students at Timboon P-12 School are surrounded by dairy, sheep and beef enterprises but do they know much about mushrooms and fungi? As part of the TAP and their Paddock to Plate investigations, the creative teachers decided to take up the challenge issued by the Australian Mushroom Growers' Association (AMGA) and introduced their students to the Mushrooms in Schools program. The mushroom kits were assembled once the mycelium had developed in the compost and when the compost had turned white, not brown. The students are tendering to their kits by spraying them with water and are working through the lesson plans and resources as their mushrooms grow ready to be harvested in a few weeks. Additional kits were also purchased from Lovell’s in Portland. An introductory survey was conducted to gauge students’ knowledge prior to their investigations and harvesting. Some students were not aware that mushrooms are not a fruit, or a vegetable – mushrooms are fungi and belong to a separate food kingdom to fruits and veggies? What else will they learn and will they enjoy eating mushrooms? It’s been a long time coming but our FarmBot greenhouse is slowing coming to fruition. In late 2022, we were advised that were successful in obtaining funding under the Federal government’s SSAF Secondary Schools Agriculture Fund designed to increase the number of young people pursuing training and working in agriculture. Our application included funding for our 2023 Year 9/10 AgHort elective, excursions, PD for teachers, Arduino, and FarmBots, a robotic open hardware system. A small greenhouse was included in the original application but after consultation with Trevor Bullen from SW TAFE, a Sproutwell greenhouse was purchased to house the FarmBots. Brett Wallace from Port Campbell Constructions is completing the greenhouse build that will provide an outdoor classroom and we are grateful for support from TOPS for making up the shortfall in funding. In the future, the greenhouse and FarmBots will be used cross curriculum for coding, humanities, food tech and science lessons but will be trialled by our 2024 Year 9/10 AgHort students and feature at TAP’s On! this year. The staffroom TAP notice board is designed to let teachers across the whole Timboon P-12 campus know about topics or curriculum activities created by other teachers, showcase local and regional business, creative ideas or potential partnerships and as a springboard for new ideas to inspire their students in 2024. Teachers are supported to "TAP that!' to help students explore what they can Learn? Make? Study? Apply? Do? Be? Last semester, our Year 8 Geography students welcomed the Corangamite Shire planners into their classroom to learn about whole town planning and contributed their thoughts to the Timboon Precinct Plan. Our Year 3/4 and 5/6 classes also contributed engagement surveys while senior students had the opportunity to complete an online survey to gauge their opinion about potential projects for our local area. Kristen Wilkes, the Strategic Planner for the Corangamite Shire, recently contacted us with an update. “Thanks again for assisting us with feedback from the Timboon School, on the Timboon Precinct Plan. Using the drawings provided by the younger students, the project team has designed the attached colour-in graphic. It translates the ideas the children had into one picture, with a little thank-you to those students. Something fun, to give back to the school. We have now also drafted the Precinct Plan, based on all the feedback we received. It can be downloaded from the project 'your say' webpage here: Timboon Precinct Plan - Corangamite Shire There is also a video describing some of the concepts that have been prepared. We'd like to invite anyone at the school to provide comment on Precinct Plan, via the webpage, if they have any feedback. Council will be accepting feedback until the 21st July” Please contribute your thoughts to the Planners on the Timboon Precinct Plan as this local feedback is very valid The sharks have reached their decision! What a fabulous morning we had at our first Timboon Shark Tank. It was fantastic to see so many students and parents attend the exhibition, the library was a hive of excitement and wonder! The Year 5/6 students should all be very proud of their efforts this term in the lead up and during the presentation of their inventions, their ICT teacher Mrs Hickman certainly is! Scoring was so very close, and the inventions presented were varied and nothing short of incredible. The judges awarded the ‘Auto Scoring Ring’ as the winning invention of the morning, particularly impressed by the confidence and professionalism the group of Indii, Stella and Jade displayed while explaining their idea. The ‘Auto Scoring Ring’ is a netball ring that uses sensors to automatically record when goals are scored. Honourable Mentions were awarded to the ‘Automatic Tree Grower’ created by Ruby, Eliza and Lizzie, ‘One Tree, One Life’ by Elise, Isla and Charlotte and ‘Mr Snuggles’ created by Imogen and Byron. Students and teachers across the primary school who attended our Shark Tank expo were asked to vote for their favourite invention as well. The People’s Choice award was given to the Find- It- Bot created by Amelia and Kiera. A huge thank you is extended to our judges, Sherri Symons from Aussie Wool Pellets, Josh McKenzie from Lochard Energy and Darcy McGlade from Diamer Corp, who took time out of their busy lives to be a part of our Shark Tank exhibition. Our gratitude is also extended to Andrea Vallance for assisting in the organisation of the event and Jeremy Bouchier for the creation of our marvellous 3D printed shark trophies. – Emily Hickman Our Year 5/6 ICT - Information and Communications Technology students are finalizing their Shark Tank entries and revising their pitches as they prep for our inaugural Shark Tank Expo. Students will pitch their ideas to our three judges, Sherri Symons from Aussie Wool Pellets, Darcy McGlade from Diamer Corp and Josh McKenzie from Lochard Energy to determine who best meets the brief to solve an identified problem. We will also have a Peoples' Choice as well as Judges' award so you will be able to cast your vote during the event. You can check out our innovation teams and their invention proposals below. Students, parents and community members are welcome to the Timboon School library on 25th June from 9.30am to 11am to see our budding entrepreneurs in action. Will you meet a budding Jacques Cousteau or Steve Jobs, come and see! Have you collected your copy of "Curdies' Tales: Stories of the river by it's people" yet? These narratives, collected by our 2023 Year 9 Humanities students, are a record of oral stories that recount peoples’ recollections of living, working and playing in the Curdies catchment area. It is hoped that a better understanding of the science and the social histories of the Curdies catchment would help inspire improved stewardship and greater protection of this fragile bionetwork for future generations To secure your copy of our book for $15.00 please contact Timboon P-12 School on [email protected] (Attention Raelene) or phone the School on 5598 3381. The Year 8 Science class have been learning about the digestive system as part of their investigation of body systems. We ‘TAPped’ into local expertise by inviting Erin Gardner from The Vet Group to describe and contrast the difference between a cow and human stomach and their respective structures. Unlike humans, Erin explained that cows, like most ruminants, have four stomachs that each play a role enabling cows to ruminate and regurgitate previously consumed feed and chew it further to help it ferment and be absorbed. Students learned that the four chambers, the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum varied in function and structure and helped move the cow’s feed through the digestive system. Students saw how technology such as cow collar or ear tag data displayed when cows grazed, ruimanted or were on heat to help with animal management and health decisions. The class compared similar grazing animals to determine if they were ruminants with four chambers in their stomachs or monogastrics with one stomach. Then, armed with gloves, students examined the four cow stomach examples and had to indicate what each chamber was, where it was placed in a cow digestive system and which stomach was the most similar to ours. Erin clarified that calves’ stomachs are initially like humans and only the abomasum is functional as milk bypasses the rumen when they are on a milk only diet. Various types of cow feeds and their importance in a balanced diet were discussed and Erin described digestive diseases and problems in calves and cows. There would have been some interesting dinner table conversations in Year 8 homes that night! |
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