Recently our Corangamite Trade Training VET Cert 11 Hospitality students hosted SouthWest TAFE butcher, Ben Thomas. Ben described his career path as a butcher with his own business and his current role as a TAFE trainer with a focus on safety and work place standards for the trainees he accredits. He stressed the importance of working with the proper equipment and how to take care of the knives in the students’ knife sets that include a chef, boning, paring, turning and bread knife and a sharpening steel. In class Ben demonstrated how to transport and use knives safely, the care of knives, how to sharpen and use the appropriate knife for the right task as part of the students’ UOC ‘Use food preparation equipment’ certification. He demonstrated how to bone out a chicken and the students really enjoyed completing this task using the resulting cuts to make a crumbed chicken breast into a chicken schnitzel sandwich for lunch. Our students from Terang College, Mortlake P-12, Camperdown College, Lavers Hill P-12 and Timboon P-12 were fortunate to have this expertise demonstrated by an acredited trainer and experienced butcher, thanks Gabby and Ben. The Term 2 TAP noticeboard in the Timboon P-12 School staffroom is designed to help inspire teachers to consider the way the TAP can help them provide applied learning opportunities and achieve real curriculum outcomes for their students. Our Year 5/6 students have been investigating space so we invited Peter Hickman, who works for the European Space Agency (ESA) as an astronomer in the southern hemisphere, to talk to our students to help reinforce their learning about the Sol Earth Luna sysyem that controls our daily lives. Using models, Peter explained the size and relationship of the sun, moon and earth and the way the tilt in axis results in seasonal changes, day and night and the equinox. Orbiting and revolving in 28 days, students learnt that the moon is still full of craters caused by impacts as the moon does not experience the climatic conditions we do on earth. Students were aware that the sun was made of hydrogen gas but were surprised that atmospheric pressure on soot on Saturn turns it into diamonds that only exist for seven seconds and that the rings are made from an ice moon that was pulled apart a million years ago. Peter also described the frontiers of space science, current orbiters that explore our solar system and explained that his job was to look at data for near earth objects. He was pleasantly surprised that so many students had telescopes at home, here's to more clear skies in the future! During the Food Tech elective, Food and Agriculture, the Year 7/8 students are also delving into the wonderful array of native foods and flavours as they investigate the “Foodie” component of the Hermitage Research Facility’s Schools Plant Science Competition. As students are tasked with creating, or finding an existing recipe that features Australian bush tucker as the hero of the dish, they first had to begin to understand the taste and flavour of some native foods. Native spices, honey and some edible insects were taste tested by the students who later provided sensory evaluations on the 12 items describing how the tucker looked, smelt and tasted. Watch this space to see our students work their way through a design brief and choose a native food or dish to create! We were recently invited by Dr John Cripps Clark, a senior science lecturer at Deakin University, to introduce the TAP model to his Primary Science and Technology Education students and cohost a zoom seminar. These students are implementing a sequence of science, design and technologies lessons, investigating science and technologies pedagogies including higher order thinking and reasoning, creativity, imagination and developing resources for their contemporary primary science classrooms. During the seminar students learnt about the background and implementation of the TAP and a variety of lessons, topics and partnerships created for junior students were showcased. The students were then challenged to consider what industries, organisations, or people that they could TAP into in their schools' area and what relevant curriculum outcomes these people or organisations could help provide. Resulting discussions included visiting a local theatre company to learn about light and shadow and a regional refinery to better understand heat and changes in matter. It was great experience to help teachers understand how they can TAP into their own communities. Thanks for the opportunity John! |
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March 2024
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