The Year 10 Science students were once again privileged to see the use of world class genetics in action when they visited Garry, Lee and Maddison Hibberd’s 'Cooriemungle Holsteins' dairy farm. Garry described the evolution of the farm and explained that breeding was very important to their 500-550 cow dairy business with the enterprise using embryo flushing and embryo transfers from dams sired by world class international bulls to maximize genetic gain in their herd. Peter Younis from The Vet Group explained the procedure and students were able to see how embryos were flushed from high genetic merit cows to be assessed before being inserted into surrogate cows. Lee clarified that she would rather milk and feed 500 efficient, quality cows that were good at converting feed into milk rather than 1,000 average cows. Maddison described the use of calf hutches to maximize the health of the resulting calves and the use of the cow barn to ensure that there was minimal feed wastage and it also allowed the cows to avoid either hot or cold adverse conditions. Technicians Paul and Elle described their respective career pathways and encouraged students to consider a career in agriculture. We are very fortunate to have access to see world class genomic technology introduced to our class by such passionate advocates in regional Victoria. Thank you Garry, Lee, Pete, Paul and Elle. We would like to invite you to attend TAP's On! 2019 an interactive, peer led demonstration of what we have accomplished this year in the Timboon Agriculture Project (TAP). On Thursday November 21st TAP's On! will showcase how Timboon P-12 staff and students are integrating agriculture into the curriculum to support learning outcomes across all areas. Just under five hundred students from Timboon P-12 School and Nullawarre and District Primary School will be rotating through peer-led activities based on the work undertaken in the classroom. From 10.00am to 1.00pm, students will be rotating through a series of workshops, almost like ‘speed dating’ on agriculture! TAP's On! demonstrates how agriculture and community engagement is integrated into our curriculum through different interactive classroom and off-campus activities. Our ‘STEP UP’ volunteer expo will be a highlight featuring SES, Ambulance Victoria, CFA and Life Saving Victoria with interactive, hands on workshops promoting volunteerism in our region. Experts or mentors are invited to assist the presenting students from Years five to ten in their peer-led workshops for our expo. Students will demonstrate what they have learned or will learn in the classroom, covering such diverse topics such as Tourism Maths, duck tales, keeping kids safe on farms, the Red Cross Pillowcase Project, environmental bugs, Fishcare, probability maths, lavender produce, CSI Timboon Mark II, healthy eating, forces in restored engines and machines, Let’s make a meal, farm PMP, nature based art and a Tardis journey back in time. TAP's On! will also feature a multi-agency incident /scenario with SES, Ambulance Victoria and CFA volunteers at lunchtime between 1.00-2.00pm. Guests are invited to stay for lunch with a TSPA (Timboon School Parents’ Association) supported BBQ. Students, ex-students, parents, members of the public, local businesses, industry representatives and educators are invited to join Timboon P-12 staff, students and industry contributors to observe and celebrate some of the remarkable initiatives the TAP has enabled. We wish to acknowledge the support of the Gall, O’Toole and Lane Foundations for their backing of the TAP in 2018/2019. TAP’s On! 2019 is proudly sponsored by Lochard Energy and Westpac Bank. Since the TAP began in mid-2012, we have had over 400 industry personnel and community members provide either direct curriculum content to students or provide PD for teachers. I have attached an invitation which depicts our latest curriculum initiatives or you can check out our blog on the Timboon P-12 website under the TAP blog tab. http://www.timboonp12.vic.edu.au/ For further information please contact 0417 470 108 or [email protected], Regards, Andrea Vallance TAP Coordinator Our Year 1/2 snail scientists have concluded their investigation of snails as part of their Mini Beasts science unit and have started to record their observations. Check out the details of their annotated snails and the well written scientific reports. Is it any wonder that both teachers and students are saying that they love mini beasts! The Year 7/8 ‘Snacking with a difference’ Food Tech students were issued a food design challenge to create a snack food that could fit into a recyclable hamburger container. Students had to refer to the Australian Healthy Eating Guidelines and research, design and create a snack that they presented in a container with fun packaging and labelling. Snacks included mini chicken wraps, mini pizza pies, chicken parma bites, Essendon egg and bacon rolls, savoury pancakes, mini pizzas, mini chicken wraps, pesto pasta, mini garlic breads and a jerk chicken burger. Wouldn’t it be great to see these in full production! After a PD session for the Year 5/6 teachers on the maths opportunities provided by studying the impact of tourists in our region, Mark Cuthell, the Coordinator of the Port Campbell Visitor Information Centre introduced the Tourism Maths unit to the Year 5/6 classes. Students learnt that over 300,000 tourists visit Uluru a year, 1.62 million visitors travel to Tasmania, the Great Barrier Reef is seen by 2 million people but, right here, in our own backyard, over 2.2 million people visit the 12 Apostles every year with numbers increasing. Students learnt that this was a ‘bucket list’ destination with visitors from our region, interstate and overseas with different expectations and spending habits. Mark described the opportunities that existed if, for example, you could make even $1 from even half of those visitors who passed through our region! Despite Port Campbell being a small town, students learnt that the average spend for tourists on a bus was $6, but there were benefits to encourage 1000 more visitors to stay for at least 3 hours as that would equate to $25 more per person with overnight stays contributing approximately $180 per person to the region’s economy. Mark then introduced the Tourism Maths challenge whereby students are given $1,600 virtual dollars to plan a 3 day/2 night holiday in the region for their family which had to include fuel, accommodation, food and activities. Students learnt that they had options to pat a dingo, fly in a helicopter, watch a sunset over the 12 Apostles or eat out every night but they had to be clever with their budgeting and consider constraints like the weather. We can’t wait to see the results of this investigation into our own backyard! Cuts, Inspired by their session with SouthWest TAFE butcher Ben Thomas, the Year 7/8 ‘Let’s make a meal’ students were challenged to research and plan a meal based around one of the 12 different cuts that Ben had sourced from a side of lamb with the class. The students' brief meant that they had to refer to the Meat Standards Australia - Prime Lamb Cuts and the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating to design a meal for 2 people based on the different types of cooking methods for their specific cuts and complete the food order for their chosen meal. Students then produced a variety of dishes including Greek lamb chops with roast potatoes, herb crusted topside roast, lamb tacos from the lamb casserole meat, lamb souvalaki, fried rice with lamb, Teriyaki lamb stirfry, Asian inspired lamb tortillas, lamb burgers with the lot and marinated lamb cutlets with roast sweet potato. What a brilliant series of lessons to encourage students to appreciate where their food comes for our lamb connoisseurs. As part of their investigations into"Mini Beasts" our Year 1/2 students visited worm master extraordinaire Terry O'Connor who proudly displayed his wonderful worms. Students observed that the worms are housed in ex dairy vats and Terry demonstrated how the compost is formed when the worms eat food scraps and other organic matter which is passed out of the worms as worm compost.This delicious dirt is then distributed around Terry's garden to improve the health and fertility of his soil and garden. Our community partnerships are a real feature of the TAP which has allowed one of the largest employers in the region, Saputo Dairy Australia, to host our VCAL students and run them through a mini site induction and plant tour. Prior to the visit students had to confirm that they read and understood the induction documents and procedures provided by Saputo Recruitment Coordinator Taylor Collins. On site, Taylor outlined her career path and described her role in recruiting for Saputo. She, and the other team members explained that they hired on attitude rather than skill, to do research on the business or position you are interviewing for, to be genuine and to engage in the interview. Gerard Lourey, The Operations Manager (Western Region) explained that the Allansford Saputo plant employed over 800 people with up to 1 billion litres of milk through the plant in year and over $800 million dollars in sales. Gerard explained that he wasn’t a keen student but after a variety of roles he has found one that he loved and happily went back to study obtaining a degree in Dairy Technology. He challenged students to find a passion and a good career will arise from it and stressed that it was important to enjoy your job, have fun at work and return home to your family safely at night. Deb Stokes, the OH & S Coordinator, explained that the processing plant was not dissimilar to her earlier position at a gas plant with the main hazards being chemicals, having to isolate electricity, the release of energy, large equipment or mobile plant moving and keeping the environment spotlessly clean as it is a food processing plant. Induction activities on site included initially working with a buddy, manual handling training, shifting activities every 20 minutes, being aware of fatigue and a zero tolerance attitude to drugs or alcohol in the workplace. Students were also taken on a site tour to the cheese making plant and the milk bottling area where they could see these safety features implemented. As part of our TAP links into community and industry and to help our Year 7/8 Eco Warriors learn more about their environment, we invited Fishcare Facilitator, Mitch McMaster, into the classroom to prepare students for a fishing session at Boggy Creek later in the term. Mitch described his career path which included studying Marine Biology at Deakin University at Warrnambool and lots of volunteering with groups like the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CCMA) before becoming a regional Fishcare Educator. He outlined three main fishing rules for recreational fishers which included a minimum size limit, a maximum bag limit and a maximum size limit and students discussed the rationale behind these different rules. Students learnt about the various types of fishes that could be caught in regional rivers, dams, along the shoreline and at sea. Mitch instructed students on how to tie a Half Blood Knot to secure their fishing hooks and told them their results were “knot bad”. After their invasive pests investigation earlier in the year students were well prepared to learn about the damage that invasive species, whether they be international or non native to a specific area, could do to an ecosystem. They learnt how to safely remove a fish hook and handle a fish with wet hands or a wet tea towel if it was to be caught and released or breached the fishing regulations. The lesson concluded with a large carp puzzle which helped students identify and understand a fish’s features such as mouth type, eye, barbels, gills, pectoral fin, lateral line, dorsal fin, caudal fin, anal fin, pelvic fin and scales. Happy fishing! Whilst exploring Mini Beasts the Year 1/2 class have turned their attention to snails as the wet weather has provided lots of opportunities for students to follow their snail trails to track them down. The snails were carefully examined by eye and then using a magnifying glass to learn about their features. Just to have an even closer look at the snails, students used LED microscopes and watched how the snails moved around the students' environment. The details are recorded and then will be compared and contrasted with worms. What an exciting word of Mini Beasts! |
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February 2024
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