To conclude their “Week of Taste” experiences, the Year 3/4 students hosted The Place of Wonder / REAL Pizza and Pasta owner, Kylie Treble, and were able to experience a ‘real’ connection with food. Kylie stressed the importance of - ‘The taste of what you eat comes partly from the SOIL, partly from the PLANT, and partly from how it’s PREPARED and PAIRED’. The students learnt about the difference between dirt and soil and how microbial activity leads to more flavoursome and nutritious food. The cabbage the students sampled took nine months to grow and students discovered that during the life cycle of a cabbage plant, an unharvested cabbage head can form a flower stalk that will eventually produce seeds. The class discussed various options of preparing food including roasting, baking, boiling, steaming and eating raw but today’s cabbage was sauteed, or quickly fried to pop! Students learnt that pairing different ingredients together could dramatically change the taste of food and that pairing can be way to encourage people to try different foods. Kylie challenged students to be open minded about taste options and prepared different cabbage combinations- bacon and red cabbage, carrot and green cabbage and a combination of red / green cabbage with egg free mayonnaise that was sampled and assessed by students. Groups then had to discuss the flavors and choose words to describe their preferred dish. The lesson was concluded with an interesting Q & A session about Kylie’s vegies, career path and the purpose and intent behind her business ventures with the goal to educate and help people appreciate real food. A great lesson, a cabbage challenge!!! Our Year 1/2 students are learning about seasons and changes all around us so we thought we’d TAPify their investigations and take them on a field trip to Brad and Becc Couch’s farm at Brucknell. Brad and Becc explained that theirs was a seasonal farm, meaning that their 350 cows calve and produce milk according to the grass curve. This means that the Couch’s cows produce milk when the most grass can be directly grassed by the cows with excess seasonal grass preserved in spring, as silage or hay to be feed to the herd when there is less feed available. They had almost finished drying off their cows so that the cows, farm and Couch’s themselves could all have a rest before calving starts again. Ruby King and Cecilia Sbrizzi from ProviCo, described what happens to the Couch’s milk when it leaves farm and explained that the milk is dried into powder to be used for products such as yoghurt, icecream, nutritional powders, chocolates, dried milk products and animal milk powders. Brad and the students toured the dairy hub learning about the history of the farm, farm layout, old dairy, new calf sheds, old / new equipment, and the new herringbone dairy with stall gates where some of the teachers were ‘milked’. Becc described seasonal changes including what the cows were doing, calves, water, grass, hay, silage, plantations and tracks. To reinforce their learning about changes, the students then had to identify which changes were Natural, Managed or Constructed with some very interesting conversations taking place. The field trip concluded with Becc supplying some Haigh’s Chocolates with a quick quiz on farm facts. Thanks Brad, Becc, Ruby and Cecilia, we learnt heaps! Our Year 3/4 students are enriching their vocabulary and learning to describe what they taste as part of the Week of Tastes sensory experience that teaches students how to recognize and appreciate taste and flavour. Decked out in their chef’s hats students had to blind taste a range of foods and describe the flavors they experienced. Students were challenged to use food related words based around the five basic tastes- sweet, bitter, salty, sour and umami (meaty, savoury) and were introduced to piquant (sharp) and sweet/sour combinations. Parent helpers assisted students to discover, predict, experiment and analyse a range of foods with exercises using students’ senses of sight, taste, smell, touch and sound. What a brilliant lesson, thanks Camille, Jenny, Maree, Tina, Kate, Rocky and Jake. Bon Appetit!! Crayfest is an annual celebration of Port Campbell and surrounds – the coast, community, volunteers, primary producers, local produce and sustainability! Over seventy of our students, accompanied by teachers and parents, were part of the Crayfest Parade and carried marine creations they had crafted under the guidance of their Art teacher, Mrs Mackieson. Our underwater procession of jellyfish, octopus and koinobori (Japanese carp windsocks) were all part of a colourful celebration of our coastal environs celebrating Port Campbell and all things marine. Timboon P-12 students and staff also provided a live mural for juniors to paint, ocean themed face painting and buntings to acknowledge our TAP Community of Educators. Congratulations to the Crayfest committee for another amazing celebration of our wonderful community! Our Year 8 Science students also TAPped into our local region as they explored our amazing and dynamic, ever evolving coastal environment at Childers Cove lead by retired Deakin lecturer and environmental scientist, Dr John Sherwood and Parks Victoria Ranger, Emma Drake. John challenged the students to become geologists and to use their senses to study the differences in rocks and sediment to investigate the fossil rich layers of the Port Campbell limestone that was once an old ocean floor. John used hydrochloric acid to produce carbon dioxide gas to establish that the parts of the cliff were made of limestone, a rock made of calcium carbonate and explained that the beach sand was biogenic, meaning that it had a living origin. Emma described her role as a Parks Victoria Ranger with the Shipwreck Coast and Hinterland managing the coastal reserve, monitoring wildlife and the environment, protecting and repairing the park’s assets and educating visitors about our fragile coastline. The focus then shifted to Moyjil, Point Ritchie, where John explained that indigenous people had camped at the mouth of the Hopkins River on old sand dunes as evidenced by middens and emphasized that it was one of Australia’s most precious sites due to an incredible dynamic of culture and natural history with it’s sequences of environmental, climatic, sea level and seismic changes, shifting coastline, volcano activity and cultural connection to country. At the Hopkins River mouth, Glenelg Hopkins Catchment Management Authority (GHCMA) Waterways Officer, Jarred Obst, described his role in protecting estuaries, where the river meets the sea, by managing the health and ecology of regional waterways for fish and vegetation. He discussed the sometimes controversial decision making process when beach berms, sand deposited from wave action on one of the highest energy coastlines in Australia, closes river mouths with artificial openings now occurring rarely, only when they are safe, appropriate and absolutely ecologically necessary. Concluding at the Hopkins Falls, Simon Williams, a Field Officer for Southern Rural Water (SRW) told our young scientists that the falls were created when basalt lava flowed and the liquid rocks cooled and it is a midway point between two ecosystems that can be bridged when the falls are flooded or when eels migrate up and down the river. Simon outlined the role of SRW in protecting waterways and the importance of rivers to the environment and the vital balance between farmers and consumers using or taking and saving water in our region. Thank you to all our wonderful hosts – what a great day! To support the Science topic – Seasons and Changes all around us, our Year 1/2 students also investigated seasons during their Literacy lessons as they delved into the stories relayed in Penny Matthews and Andrew McLean’s book, “A Year on our Farm”. The storybook describes a year on an Australian farm from the viewpoint of a farm child and explains how each month of the year dictates the tasks that must be done on a small mixed farm. Students had to create a Story Map that listed the three months in each season and then pictorially describe the activities that happened during each of the four seasons. The class also learnt about the seasonal activities that take place on regional dairy and sheep farms. This is a great precursor to our field trip to Couch’s dairy farm in a few weeks. Following our recent River Detectives PD, our Year 10 Geography class took their investigation of the Curdies estuary outdoors to learn more about the health of waterways in our region. During their field trip to the Curdies River at the trestle bridge near Timboon, Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CCMA) River Detectives Project Officer, Deirdre Murphy, and Debbie Dalziel, from the Curdies Valley Landcare Network asked students about their knowledge of the Curdies catchment and the impact of land use on water quality. Breaking into groups, the students then tested a water sample from the Curdies and compared this with a sample from the upper Curdies catchment near Cobden. Students compared water temperature, turbidity, pH, salinity, and reactive phosphorus (nutrient content) of the water and discussed their findings. Ensuing discussions included the impacts of change in nutrient levels in the Curdies catchment that can result in blue green algae blooms, poor water quality and fish deaths. Another group sorted and identified water bugs from the trestle bridge site and considered what happens to biodiversity when there is loss of habitat and what can be done to restore and improve waterway condition. This field trip enabled students to understand the ecological impacts of land use changes and it’s impact on potential water quality in our region. Thanks Deirdre and Debbie. To acknowledge Nutrien Timboon’s support of our NCFH Gear Up for Ag workshop, and as a timely reminder of the importance of farm and workplace safety, we invited Tim Nowell, the Branch Manager of Nutrien Ag Solutions into the Year 9/10 AgHort classroom. Tim described his career pathway starting as a light engine mechanic with a local Kawasaki dealer, through to Ford Motor Company as a Group Leader in the stamping plant, owning his own livestock transport business, then working in quarries and mines, managing the construction of the Western District Livestock Exchange through to his current role. As these roles involved managing change, redevelopment and overseeing work teams, workplace safety was high on his radar, especially following the death of a team member in a mining accident. He is reminded of this incident daily and this unnecessary fatality has prompted him to take a lead on workplace safety in the organisations he is involved in. Tim stressed the importance of building a culture of safety by ensuring that ‘if something isn’t safe, make it safe and if you can’t make it safe, don’t do it’. By providing examples from his life and incidents that impacted his colleagues, students learnt that it was important to report near miss and incidents as these could escalate to a major injury or fatality. The significance of not taking shortcuts or not concentrating on a task was emphasized as was the importance of using safe facilities or refusing to work in unsafe conditions. Tim also spoke about the importance of mental health and wellbeing including starting conversations with the TradeMutt shirts, supporting Dolly’s Dream, RUOK and understanding people. This very powerful lesson resonated with all of the students and we are extremely grateful for Tim’s passion for keeping people safe and his candour and honesty in this important message for our young people and their families. . Our VCE Environmental and Outdoor Education students are investigating Australian outdoor environments before humans, the impact of indigenous communities, European colonisation and their relationships with Australian outdoor environments. To contextualise this knowledge, our VCE students rode to Port Campbell where local historian and member of the Heytesbury and District Historical Society, Peter Younis, provided local, historical context for their queries. Peter was able to describe historical sea levels, the impact of indigenous people on our coastal vegetation and the changes that have ensued since colonisation. Students learnt about early settlers in Victoria, European history in our region, land use changes and the settlement of Timboon in the 1860 with the establishment of the railway, limeworks, farming and regional hops plantations. Land clearing, agriculture and establishment of Newfield in 1870s, the Bailey Settlement in the 1930s and the 1960s Heytesbury Settlement and their impacts on our regional environments were also discussed. Students’ questions about the treatment of indigenous communities, the settlement of Port Campbell, land use changes, and economic drivers were also reviewed. How fortunate are our students to have this local expertise so readily available? Thanks Peter! Our Year 7 Science students are are learning about food webs so we thought we’d continue our investigation of Southern Brown Bandicoots by inviting Marion Manifold from the Port Campbell Community Group into our science classroom to discover how we can help protect this species. Once called ‘bush rats’, the Southern Brown Bandicoot usually resides within 50km of the coast in Victoria, South Australia or NSW with seven out of eleven bandicoot species either threatened or extinct. Marion and Community Group members monitor a stretch along the Port Campbell headland as the bandicoots have become more visible in that area after the Great Ocean Road was moved inland. Remote cameras are used to record activity noting the date and time and other wildlife in the area including Rufus Bristlebirds, Buff Banded Rails, Black Wallabies, Ringtail Possums and predators including feral cats, dogs, foxes and snakes. Students leant that these marsupials are threatened by habitat loss, feral animals, wildlife corridors eroding, uncontrolled pets, road kill and a lack of understanding. The class was then tasked with designing a poster or sticker to help educate the community about Southern Brown Bandicoots and how we can help protect them. If you'd like to learn more, check out the website https://www.bandicoots-port-campbell.com/ What a great way to learn about food webs and local ecosystems. |
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March 2024
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