Today our 11 VCE Business Management students undertook preparation for their 'active exam' as well as seized an opportunity to enjoy some treats from local businesses, A little Bit of Sweet and Timboon Fine Ice Cream. As part of the TAP, and an integral component of their learning, we encourage our students to look at business opportunities or agribusiness/ community ventures through a lens as an owner, tourist or regular customer. During the field trip to these businesses, the students had to take the lead and ask themselves what they would have to consider "If they owned or operated this business?", ie what would be the specific issues, areas of concern, opportunities or potential and then do a SWOT analysis of both businesses back at school. During their visit, as evidence of our learning in community and the evolution of businesses, Michelle Fratantaro described the demographics she considers when stocking her shop that included a huge range of lollies, pinatas, products for all members of the family and gifts for giving at Christmas. Tim Marwood, of Timboon Fine Ice Cream, described the addition of accommodation to diversify his operation, he offered the students work at the Ice Creamery and has indicated that he is willing to listen to any business ideas that the students have developed. After today's excursion to scope and consider opportunities, students will sit an exam next week when they will reflect on their learnings from these two entities and the other local businesses they have investigated this year including GORGE Chocolates and the Chocolate Alpaca, Great Ocean Road Paddock 2 Plate Farm Tours and Ocean Road Tourism / Port Campbell Visitor Information Centre as the exam will cover a broad range of areas such as financing, managing, marketing, staffing, OH&S and corporate responsibilities. Learning in our community makes it even more relevant and real, thank you to our hosts! Now that they have a pretty good understanding about parts of a plant and how things grow, we decided to take our Preps out to see how this works outside the school grounds. The Preps walked to the Heytesbury & District Landcare Network’s nursery where Geoff Rollinson, Lyndell Driscoll and Kate Leslie showed them different types of plants including trees, shrubs and grasses. Geoff talked to the students about the about the role of trees to provide shade, shelter, habitat, and the important role of shelterbelts on farms. The fortunate Preps planted seedlings in pots including Shining Peppermint Tree (grows up to 10m) Prickly Tea Tree (up to 5m) and Silver Tussock Grass (grows up to 1m) that they could take home to plant. At Timboon Berry World, Heather Nicholls talked to students about the strawberry plants and the students learnt that the strawberries grow from the flower buds and that the green caps are called calyx. Heather stressed the important role that bees play in pollinating plants and that it was really important to keep the soil healthy to grow healthy plants. The lucky Preps were then able to pick the red ripe strawberries which were enjoyed as a picnic at Berry World. Heather even let the Preps try some of their strawberry jam and gave them a colouring activity for back at school. Thanks Geoff, Lyndell, Kate, and Heather for bringing our learning to life and to David Pope for donating the bus ride back to school for the excited, but weary Prep students. 'I can label the parts of a flower' was the success criteria task that student placement teacher, Miss Pouw, gave the Preps to help teachers assess students' understanding of the plant component of the 'Growing Well' unit. During previous lessons the Prep students had planted seeds, annotated scientific drawings by labelling the roots, stem, leaves, bud and flower of a plant and depicted various plant sections in cantilevered drawings. Our budding scientists had examined plants with roots to illustrate what they could see of the plant above and below the ground. Further experiments involved flowers drawing up dye through their stems to make the tips of the petals change colour. So, it looks like the Preps are doing a great job of their assessment, aren't they bloomin marvellous! We’re back! It was wonderful to be able to welcome a TAP community expert, The Vet Group’s, Zoe Vogels, into our Year 9 Science class room to help contextualise our students’ understanding of disease and the immune system. Introducing calf scours and mastitis in cows as examples, Zoe used her furry bug toys to describe the various pathogens (bugs) that caused these diseases. Students learnt how the immune system in calves/cows works to protect the animal by fighting the disease effectively highlighted with the aid of Zoe’s insightful cartoon prompts. The treatment options for treating diarrhoea in calves and mastitis in cows were outlined and the various risk factors for the two diseases were discussed comparing these with human treatment options. It was great to have some real, relevant and practical examples provided to help reinforce the students’ understanding of this important topic. Thanks Zoe! The Mini Beast science unit has encouraged students in Year 1/2 to really investigate the natural world around them and study the variety of mini creatures that share their environs around the school and home. Students have recorded their observations in labelled scientific drawings, life cycle records, literacy tasks and cross sectional drawings of an ant colony. Check out all the different chambers that are created for different purposes such as storing food, housing the Queen Ant as she lays eggs, the developing pupae, larva and the rest of the colony. In a year disrupted by COVID restrictions, our Year 5/6 students were not able to participate in our usual WorkSafe ‘worst practice’ Lego farm scenarios or go on a field trip to a working property to see ‘best practise’ in action. Instead, we challenged students to unleash their creativity and design educational farm safety materials and messaging based the theme,’ Think Farm Safe, Be Farm Safe’ as part of a KidSafe Victoria Farm Safety competition. This year’s theme centres around encouraging children to take the time to stop and think about the potential injury hazards that exist on farms and to ensure that safety is kept front of mind at all times in the farm environment. Remote learning has meant that some tasks could not be completed prior to the close of the competition but that hasn’t stopped the students creating story boards and stop motion animations to highlight specific farm safety issues. These include the safe use of farm machinery, the supervision of children and securing farm animals. Our students are making steady progress and we look forward to viewing the films at the end of the term as an opportunity to learn and discuss farm safety issues in a fun and engaging way. |
Archives
April 2024
|