Inspired by our recent guests Andrew, Beth, Jack and Tim who brought in an ambulance, skid steer and excabvator respectively, our Year 1/2 students have issued Push and Pull themed invitations to their parents and families to join them at TAP’s On! on 8th November to see even more of their physics and science investigations on display. See you there! Timboon P-12 School has been successful in its application to the Secondary Schools Agriculture Fund (SSAF) to integrate even more STEM learning objectives into its curriculum to inspire the next generation of farmers and today’s fledgling engineers. The Timboon project will expand on the current Timboon Agriculture Project (TAP) curriculum based applied learning opportunities and will provide a platform for the development of a new Year 9/10 AgHort Connections elective combining STEM, commerce and humanities to showcase to students, teachers and our community the diverse range of rewarding career opportunities in agriculture. The school has received $56,000 which will be used to create even more real and relevant curriculum and engagement opportunities for all students, especially in the Year 9/10 AgHort cohort. During immersion, field trips, workplace tours and incursions students will learn about the myriad of careers across paddock to plate pathways and that there are many ways to contribute to help feed the world. A FarmBot robotic open hardware system will be purchased to enable students to work in a small garden growing food with capacity to weed, water, soil test with students refining their coding skills to generate tasks. Other tools like 3D printers and drones to provide spatial and data-based analytics, a greenhouse to conduct experiments and other engagement tools will be utilized. This project will continue to share the work of the TAP facilitating an applied learning approach in the P-12 classrooms, linking the curriculum with tasks and activities associated with specific occupations and industries and keep contributing to strategic planning and program development in industry, community and education partnerships. The Secondary Schools Agriculture Fund forms part of the Labor Government’s $50 million investment in the Agricultural College Modernisation Program – helping more students pursue careers in agriculture and meet the growing demands of the growing farm, food and fibre sector. Improving access to vocational education and training (VET) is part of the Senior Secondary Pathway Reforms, offering students more choices that match their strengths and interests. For more information visit vic.gov.au/secondary-schools-agriculture-fund. Minister for Education Natalie Hutchins “This is all about backing our students – who are the future of agriculture and the next generation of farmers. This funding will help thousands of young people get the skills and the experience they need for a career in the sector and set them on the path to a bright future.” Minister for Agriculture Gayle Tierney “These grants will provide a huge benefit – supporting more students with ambitions to embark on a career in agriculture and help them develop the skills need to get into the sector.” Just because they can’t join in big community running events, it doesn’t mean that the Year 5/6 students can’t get their collective pulses racing!! Mark Cuthell and Nina Devlin from the Port Campbell Visitor Information Centre have created some great resources based around our local parkrun as part of our Running Maths unit of work. After an introduction to our local parkrun, students had to consider how many steps or kilometers the participants would run and what that cumulative distance could be. Students had to calculate the number of runners, walkers, volunteers and observers based on their mode of transport by determining ‘what would that sum look like?’ Extension activities explored the impact on tourism in our region included determining the value of fuel and ice cream sales and the ‘Butter Chicken demand’ from The Corner Store. The classes took part in their own simulated parkrun and recorded their pulses before and after the run. The topic inspires our students and their families to safely exercise and get out and about together to explore our amazing region. As the Year 7 Geography classes have been learning about water and the water cycle, we hosted Gene Gardiner, from the Corangamite Catchment Management Authority (CCMA,) and environmental educator, Debbie Dalziel, to help the students understand their local catchment system. Students learnt that Curdies catchment area takes in Power Creek around Timboon with the main Curdies catchment near Purrumbete, Jancourt with a subcatchment into Scott’s Creek, Cooriemungle Creek and other local tributaries. We live in a heavy rainfall area with lots of hills and gullies and these interconnected waterways were placed under pressure from erosion and nutrient transfer when the Heytesbury settlement was cleared for farming during the 1940s - 1980s. Gene and Debbie outlined that the recent blue green algae bloom at the Curdies River in Peterborough was linked to fish kills and was caused by the diffuse phosphorus load in the catchment that came from no single source, but many areas in the catchment. As nutrients in the waterways tell us about the health of the waterways, students tested three water samples to determine the saltiest, the most dissolved oxygen and the most phosphorous: a dam in Brucknell, the Boggy Creek and the boat ramp at Peterborough. The main messages were that we need to be conscious of what may end up in waterways and should plant trees, provide habitat for fish, prevent erosion, restrict or apply fertilizer well before rain events and restrict stock access to waterways as we are all part of the solution to protect the river’s health. Gene left us with a message that the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago and the second best is today. As a part of their biennial science studies of ‘Push and Pull’, the Year 1/2 students were able to observe some big machines in action and were challenged to observe what parts of machines ‘pushed’ or ‘pulled’. Tim Roberts used a Kobelco 13.5t excavator to explain how levers and pistons could make the arm push or pull a tree shear with very big or exact movements. Beth and Jack Roberts described how the New Holland C232 Bobcat skidsteer used force to move and they demonstrated the hydraulics and rams that were used to move the bucket and tread. Paramedic Andrew Berry demonstrated how forces are used in the Mercedes Benz ambulance and how to safely use your body core to safely push and pull to prevent injuries. Students observed the Stryker stretcher and foldable wheelchair in action and learnt that force is even used to push/pull a syringe. Transformers indeed! Thanks again Tim, Beth, Jack and Andrew. Our 3/4 students’ Paddock to Plate unit has concluded with the production of our beautiful bovine, ‘Milky Way’. Dairy Australia’s ‘Picasso Cow’ competition encourages students to record their understanding of all things dairy on a lifesize fibreglass cow that is then decorated to depict either farm to plate or health and nutrition. To compliment her two existing herd mates the students chose the farm to plate option focussing on the technology and innovation that they discovered during their classroom investigations and excursions. A learning journal and powerpoint was supplied as our competition entry to demonstrate all the learning that took place over the term. Thank you to the many people who helped inspire and educate our students, Shannara Drake from Bunnings Warrnambool for supplying the paint, Ashley Cook, Shane Coates and Nathan Lawson from Timboon Motors for Milky’s protective spraypaint coat and Tania Ludders from Everycow for her cow collar. Congratulations to the Year 3/4 students and teachers, especially Mrs Hickman and Mrs Mackieson on our colourful cow. “The 3/4s have been painting a cow this year that has machinery on it. We have had so much fun painting the cow, it’s name is Milky Way. All the 3/4s have voted on the name and combined the designs together and made the front of the cow and the back of the cow. The 3/4s have been painting the cow since the start of the TERM! We are having a fun time painting it. We will be adding details at the end of this week hopefully. It has been a great EXPERIENCE! We loved it and we hope that the 3/4s are having a great time”. - Lizzie & Ethan Our Year 9/10 Forensic Science elective students will be investigating fire and arson in the next few weeks, so just in case - kidding, we thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce them to potential causes, containment and extinction of house fires. Our junior students have a great relationship with the Timboon CFA as they explore bushfires in the Natural Disasters unit, so we asked Clyde Bassett to lead a session on a more immediate, year round threat. Clyde and Steph Cawsey lead a discussion on location and ignition points around the home before outlining the use of a fire blanket, the five different types of fire extinguishers available and their usage. As the CFA branch has collected expired extinguishers on site, our students were encouraged to discharge them to practise putting out a fire. Michael Cover then challenged our students to tackle the FLAIM 3D training system where students could choose a fire scenario and had to identify what type of extinguisher was needed and the means to extinguish it. Students were also invited to consider to joining their local CFA brigade as an opportunity to volunteer as part of a great team and contribute to their community whilst learning new skills. Thanks to Clyde, Steph and Michael for hosting a potentially, life saving experience for our class. 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 Year 11 VCAL students and run them through a mini site induction and plant tour. Field Services Manager, Rowan Ault, and Field Services Advisor, Joy Coulson, welcomed the students to the Saputo Australia site at Allansford. Daniel Gardiner summarised the OH&S practises as outlined in Saputo’s FY 2023 Health and Key Safety Objective Plan that included working in confined spaces, manual handling and emergency management. Rob Leadbetter described the continuous improvement procedures in place as an ongoing effort to improve all elements of the Saputo organisation – processes, tools, products, services etc with a goal to get the best return for every litre of milk. Our students were able to observe the bulk cheese manufacturing plant through a viewing window where cheese maker, Steve Billington, explained the highly automated process from milk to blocks of cheese through the cheese producing plant. At the fresh milk manufacturing plant, Christina Cox and Grant Walker from Sungold, showed students the production area where they learnt that over 200,000 litres of milk are bottled in a day with 50-60 different skews of milk in that mix. The VCAL students could observe safety features like chemical showers, eye wash stations, railings and dedicated walkways all around the site and were encouraged to investigate the Saputo website if they were looking for work or experiences in food manufacturing. To contextualise their classroom learning about genetics and genomics our Year 10 Science students undertook a field trip to Nick and Simone Renyard’s Meon Valley dairy farm. Students inspected the new rotary dairy that was built to replace their 30 year old platform with an emphasis on using technology to increase both cow / worker comfort and ease of operation. The Renyard’s mating program was summarised with an emphasis on using genetics to improve cow health, farm production and have less environmental impact by breeding a smaller, more productive animal. Peter Younis from The Vet Group outlined how sexed semen was used in the business and explained that Renyards could expect 90% of the offspring to be female and that the conception (fertility) rate has improved as technology has advanced with it being only a fewer percent less reliable than conventional semen. The use of cow collars and apps linked to phones and their computer system was detailed with the collars sending data on cow mobility, heath and fertility through rumination and activity sensors on the collars. Nick showed how this data was used to manage the whole herd health by sending alerts to identify individual cows that may become unwell, for example lame, not ruminating properly, ill or starting to calve. The most accurate feature of the collars is their ability to pick cows on heat and draft cohorts of cows for mating. Peter then demonstrated how cows are preg tested with students being able to detect a foetal heart beat on a monitor. This field trip was able to reveal how technology is at the cutting edge of agriculture with an exciting, practical application of science and technology in our regional dairy industry. Timboon P-12 School are proud to celebrate the 10 Year anniversary of the TAP and acknowledge the vital role that our community and industry partners play in this innovative and successful school partnership. Over 90 of our industry and community partners joined us to look back and reflect on what we have built, with the strong support of our amazing community. Mr Reid welcomed our guests and informed them that over 579 people have provided teacher PD or worked with our students since August 2012 with 128 people engaged in classroom activities or have hosted us at their worksites already in 2022. Teachers Nigel Mottram and Mandi Poustie described the role of Andrea Vallance, the TAP Learning Broker, and the TAP champions in providing hands on learning opportunities and linking the classroom curriculum to problem solving and real world engagement. Robyn Vale, the TAP Steering Committee Chair, outlined the evolution of the TAP and acknowledged the role that WestVic Dairy’s Chair, John Dalton, and EO, Mike Weise, played in providing space for the genesis of the school partnership concept. The TAP model was developed by principal, Rosalie Moorfield, Vice Principal, Sean Fitzpatrick, School Council President, Chris Hibburt and WestVic Dairy’s Career Coordinator, Robyn Vale, in collaboration with teachers and the TAP Steering Committee who guided it’s evolution. Robyn interviewed TAP mentors, Mark Cuthell, from Port Campbell Tourist Information Centre, James Maxwell representing Cooriemungle Operations, veterinarian, Zoe Vogels, dairyfarmer Michelle Gristede, Josh Walker from the Timboon Railway Shed Distillery and TAP Coordinator, Andrea Vallance about engaging with students, staff, why they were involved in classroom activities and their most memorable TAP encounters. Davin thanked Anne Frazer for producing a booklet and movie to record this milestone, acknowledged the role of the TAP in helping reinforce community connections and thanked our original funders, Dairy Australia and WestVic Dairy and our current supporters, the Gall, O’Toole, Lane and Uebergang Foundations. He announced that we were able to recently capitalize on the TAP’s success to qualify for a Secondary Schools Agriculture Fund grant and the evening concluded with thanks to our incredible community for bringing the world into our classrooms. |
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