To conclude our Year 9/10 Science elective, Principles of Flight, we hosted ex Timboon P-12 student, Sean Lenehan, and Dr Blake Allan, the Chief Remote Pilot for Deakin University into the classroom to describe how drone technology is used across a variety of industries and organisations. Sean outlined the different categories applied to drone licences such as recreational, excluded and commercial with different restrictions and requirements involved in operating drones in various regions and for differing purposes. Sean described his role with Life Saving Victoria using drones for shark spotting, people counting, lifesaving, photography, videography, mapping and search and rescue purposes. Blake explained that his career path began with an interest in environmental science and that he was now able to partner that with drone technology. Students learnt about Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in aerial mapping and the citizen science monitoring project to record changes in our coastline. Drones are used in agriculture to provide orthomosaicas,3D volumetrics, time-series analysis based on high-accuracy UAV data, and multispec with thermal imaging in vegetation analysis, agriculture, wildlife monitoring and arboriculture either independently or coded in a swarm formation. Students were then fortunate enough to be able to pilot and manoeuvre the Tello drones that Blake brought in around obstacles in the classroom ...lots of flight principles in place! Currently investigating narratives and inspired by an introductory session with local journalist, author and duck farmer, Greg Clarke, our Year 1/2 students published their own duck based or farming stories. Greg very generously came back into the classroom to review the stories and critique the books. He was very impressed with the standard of writing and told the students they did a great job. The range of interesting titles and original ideas was a standout and Greg reinforced the importance of an engaging title or first sentence to encourage the reader to want to know more. It was obvious that the students had followed Greg’s recommendation to work hard editing their work with ‘one idea, one sentence’. He proposed that part of the editing process was to read the story out loud to yourself because if you get lost, your reader has no chance to follow your narrative. You could have heard a pin drop when several students read their publications to Greg with intriguing titles like: “The stuck duck”, “The duck who wanted some peace and quiet”, “A duck in the city”, “Missing ducks”, “The duck that wanted to go to Fiji” and “The sneaky fox”. Our Year 1/2 students are very fortunate to have someone with Greg’s expertise help them become more authentic storytellers and authors. Thanks Greg! This semester our Year 7/8 Garden Gurus class have been very industrious around the school grounds. Their biggest feat was to clean up and rejuvenate an old garden bed on the north side of the old basketball court. This sloping site was filled with carpet, rubbish, bricks, unruly agapanthus and scraggly overgrown bushes. The students evened up the beds, removed the vegetation and rubbish, pulled out the aggies, trimmed back the bushes, spread mulch and replanted the site with Australian native plants including westringia, correa and a variety of proteas. Originally this was to be the site for our School Kitchen Garden through the Corangamite Shire Environmental Grant program but this is a much better use of the sloped garden. What a great garden space this neglected site has become! 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 Gardener 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. 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. Then, armed with gloves, students examined four 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. There would have been some interesting dinner table conversations in Year 8 homes that night! Contributing towards a joint Timboon P-12 entry, the Year 7/8 Food and Agriculture Food Tech students also entered a component of the Hermitage Research Facilities Schools Plant Science, ‘Native Foods’ competition. The Food Tech students conducted native flavour sensory evaluations then worked through the ‘Tuck into Bush Tucker’ section where they developed a recipe using traditional bush tucker foods / ingredients, working through a design brief to prepare, cook and taste their own recipe. The dishes created included cricket flour pancakes and waffles, Greek donuts with honey, wattleseed brownies, hedgehog, honey cinnamon bars, honey joys, native flavours pizza, Grandmas honey cakes and chocolate chip cricket cookies. As part of their Geology and Science studies the Year 3 / 4 students have been investigating “Beneath our Feet” that examines how soils are formed and the various land profiles in our region. As a revision exercise our students hosted Nerissa Lovric from Agriculture Victoria who described the structure of the soil particles and students could identify different agricultural areas across the state based on land types. Nerissa bought in a sample of soil that demonstrated how dung beeetles move through different soil layers and was very impressed with students' knowledge of different rock types, their properties and understanding of terms like bedrock, subsoil and parent material. After examining the Heytesbury and District Landcare core soil samples students learnt that the soil samples could be millions of years old. Nerissa described how the Heytesbury Settlement was cleared for farm land in the 1960s as a soldier settlement scheme and now how thousands of trees are being replanted across the farmlands to help counter erosion and provide shelter and shade for stock. This semester our Year 7/8 Plant Science students have been hosting guest speakers, undertaking experiments, conducting taste tests and research activities as they prepared their entries for the Hermitage Research Facilities Schools Plant Science Competition. The ‘Native Foods’ competition encouraged students to investigate the aroma and flavours of native foods and our students produced brochures describing the potential of finger limes, lilly pillys, midyim berries, Tasmanian pepper berry, wattleseed, lemon myrtle, Davidson plums and saltbush. Students also had to produce reports based on their experiments around the salinity of soil for optimum seed germination and submit examples of their science journals. Once again our Year 3/4 students are involved in Dairy Australia’s Picasso Cow project as they investigate, ‘Paddock to Plate’. The Picasso Cows unit is designed to help students learn about the Australian dairy industry and the health and nutrition benefits of dairy foods as part of a balanced diet. Both of these themes are reflected in our two current cows but our new herd mate will record the technology that is utilized paddock to plate. Our cow was recently delivered and then transported to Timboon P-12 School where she will be transformed after a lively design process. Watch this space! The Year 9/10 ‘The Bakery’ Food Tech students have been working and learning in our school kitchen this semester but we thought we’d like them to experience how real commercial kitchens operate in wholesale and retail bakeries. Nicole McLennan hosted us at Clarke’s Pies in Mortlake and explained that she was the 4th generation of her family to work in the 70 year old family business. Students were able to observe both traditional and modern equipment in use including their new pie filling machine and were able to sample filling sausage roll casings and making pasties. Clarke’s Pies mainly makes pies, sausage rolls and pasties with a small range of slices included in their product line and the students were fortunate enough to taste test these goodies. At Terang Country Bakery, chef and team member Carolyn Carlin described how Gaye McVilly and Brad Burkitt established the Bakery only 5 years ago but they have already won a lot of local and national prizes for their produce. Students could see slight variations in the equipment but what was very similar was how efficient both businesses had to be with their production schedule, timing, work and oven space and use of staff. Gaye and Brad have a big product range sold wholesale and retail through their café and the students continued their enthusiastic taste testing in Terang. Carolyn later sent through some previous photos of vanilla slice production, pies being cooked and raw pasties prior to cooking. What a wonderful, delicious way to sample a career in a bakery business! Thanks Nicole and Carolyn The Year 1/2 students have mixed, blended, folded, combined and merged a range of solid and liquid combinations as they investigated the Science unit, “All Mixed Up!” but surely the most yummy was our scone making activity! Under the guidance of Gabby, Marci and Shannon in the Food Tech kitchen, students shifted flour, blended a liquid butter / milk combination and stirred it into a dough mixture. After kneading and cutting out the scones the students cleaned up their work stations then watched the ovens with much anticipation as their scones rose. The scones were then bagged up and taken back to the classroom to sample – hopefully some treats made it home! |
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March 2024
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