Food Technology

Earlier this week our Year 11 Food Technology students worked with an industry professional who specialises in food styling and grazing boards. She shared her knowledge of her field, placement and ideas around this latest trend in the Food Technology industry.

The girls engaged in a three hour ‘hands on’ incursion where they worked in groups to prepare a range of sweet and savoury platters. We are extremely grateful to Ms Zeiz for formulating this opportunity to work with an industry professional and learn a range of skills in food presentation.

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UTS STEAMPunk Girls Showcase

Last Thursday our 8.1 class presented their final project designs to a panel of judges that included members of our College Leadership Team and member of the STEAMPunk Girls from the University of Technology.

These project designs were the culmination of a joint initiative with STEAMPunk Girls to inspire girls to get involved in activities involving STEAM learning. Our driving question for the project was, ‘Can we survive drought?’, with the class divided into groups responding to this question in any way they saw fit.

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The project designs ranged from devices that monitored the position and health of livestock through to robots that used sensors to detect the moisture levels in soil. Part of the challenge was that each group had to incorporate at least one BBC Microbit into their design. Each Microbit is equipped with a variety technologies that can be coded to compete various tasks. The students also had access to a variety of sensors that could be attached to the Microbit.

The presentations were simply outstanding and the judges were faced with some tough decisions in order to decide which device could be developed further by the students. In the end the team that created the ‘Micro Shower’ were judged to have come up with a simple solution to an everyday issue that could be taken forward as a viable product to be developed.

Here is their presentation:

Acknowledgement of Country Update

Our senior Indigenous students are on track to create something really amazing. They have been working with the students at St Charles over the last couple of months to create their own ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ as a lasting legacy for the College.

The project would not be happening without the wonderful Mrs Sarah Collins. She has been the driving force behind getting so many people supporting the students in making this happen. This week the students did some filming in our front garden.

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Studies of Religion

On Thursday our Year 11 Studies of Religion students ventured out to Auburn to spend some time at the magnificent Auburn Gallipoli Mosque. It was a wonderful experience for the students and opened their eyes to the beauty of the Islamic faith.

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Tech Girls are Superheroes

We are entering a team in the Tech Girls are Superheroes Challenge this year. This is an exciting initiative and we are delighted that Miss Nicola Steele will be mentoring our team throughout the challenge.

The girls involved are all from Year 9. Tilly Groves, Gabrielle Lee, Iona Dyson, Stephanie Hooper and Lara Ciaglia will all be doing their very best to come up with something amazing.

This year’s challenge takes place over a twelve week period with the project submission due on July 26. The teams are to take one of the following categories and aim to build a mobile app to solve a problem that exists within that category in their local community.

The categories are:

• Poverty
• Environment
• Peace
• Equality
• Education
• Health

It will be exciting to watch the team as they develop their idea throughout the challenge. We hope to share some of their journey as they go along, without giving away too many secrets!

 

Ancient Egypt

A group of our Year 7 Newman class spent some time today exploring the Ancient Egypt tour from the team that created the hugely popular Assassin’s Creed game series.

The tour is purchased separately and does not come with the game. This option emerged from the creators realising there was a market for education in many of the amazing worlds they created for the games.

The Ancient Egypt tour is simply amazing! The graphics are exceptional and the students can explore the world using characters from the time. The students had a great deal of fun this morning exploring what options are available within the tour and are looking forward to showing the rest of the class later this week.

With all Year 7 students currently studying Ancient Egypt this will be a valuable tool to deepen their understanding of what life was like in those times.

Year 10 Science

During this term our Year 10 Science classes participated in a ‘roller coaster’ project that tested their knowledge of physics and forces.  The students were given a number of guidelines that they needed to adhere to in completing the project.

Here are some of the features that the track needed to incorporate:

• Two hills in addition to the initial descent
• At least one banked turn
• One decline at an angle greater than 50 degrees
• The track should also include at least one of the following features.
• Vertical loop (circular or tear drop)
• Corkscrew that has three helices
• The design must incorporate some method of bringing the car to rest so that it stops within 50 cm of the end of the track; this method should not entail human intervention or activation.
• The track and car may be constructed from any material desired.

There were a number of excellent responses but the work done by Isabella Tole was very impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Year 7 History

All Year 7 students went to the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney today to develop skills we will need in our History course. Our guides for the day were an archaeologist and three final year university students.

The day included many interactive activities concerning the ancient societies of Egypt, Greece and Rome. We participated in many tactile activities one of which was getting to feel and draw artefacts. Many of us were astonished by the artefacts intricacy and how they used them.  An example of this was a fragment of pottery from Pompeii in 79 AD the pot was hard and brittle but was still a beautiful maroon red. I was in awe as I sketched it! It was covered in beautiful carvings of stags and men with arrows.

In the collection of artefacts were organ jars from  Ancient Egypt as well as idols and a mummified body of a boy that was around six years old. His name was Horris. The university students knew that Horris was around 6 years old because he just lost his first milk tooth and the adult tooth was still in his gum.

Other tasks that we enjoyed were spotting the anachronisms in a Pompeii landscape built from lego. The landscape  was created by a lego artist and took around three months to build.  The landscape contained components from different periods in the history of Pompeii.

Personally I learnt a great deal from this excursion through the interaction with the university students as they shared their expertise with us as well as being able to see all the artefacts.

Patricia Eriksson (Year 7)

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International Mathematics Modelling Challenge (IM²C)

Four of our best mathematicians are currently involved in the International Mathematics Modelling Challenge (IM²C). The IM²C is an international modelling competition involving teams of secondary students from a number of countries. The IM²C poses a number of real-world mathematical scenarios, and each team works for several days using freely available material (from the web and other sources). At the end of this time, each team presents a report on their solution.

The main aim of the IM²C is to promote mathematical modelling, encouraging participants to explore the application of mathematics in real situations to solve problems of importance. Encouraging an extension of experience in mathematical modelling for students in secondary schools, the IM²C seeks to develop and enhance students’ ability to visualise, understand and apply mathematics in real-world contexts, providing a valuable opportunity for the practical demonstration of in-school learning and application of theory.

Real-world problems require a mix of different kinds of mathematics for their analysis and solution, and take time and teamwork. The IM²C provides students with a deeper experience both of how mathematics can explain our world and what working with mathematics looks like.

Difficult problems in society are almost always tackled by groups of people with different areas of expertise. By mobilising students in teams, the IM²C replicates real-world conditions; requiring collaboration and contribution from different skill sets, perspectives and methodologies to achieve overall success.

Providing an opportunity for peer-based learning, this aspect of the IM²C also helps to incorporate and reinforce the Australian Curriculum proficiency strands – understanding, fluency, problem-solving and reasoning – as students work together, communicate with one another and employ creativity, reason and logic to successfully solve the defined problem.

 

Mega Maths Day

Our top Year 10 Maths class spent today at Sydney University participating in a Mega Maths Day. The purpose of the day was to provide Year 10 students with experiences that might inspire them to take on higher levels of mathematics in Stage 6.

The day started with a fascinating session on number hosted by the incredible Adam Spencer. He is always entertaining and he had the students in the palm of his hand as he explored prime numbers, indices and factorials. Two of our students were lucky enough to join him on stage and both received a signed copy of his latest book.

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We then went into a series of interactive workshops that were designed to show the students how mathematics could be incorporated into a variety of disciplines.

The first workshop was a amazing game built around probability. The students were split into teams where they competed against each other over three rounds. The second workshop was called ‘Economics 1+1’ but was more of a lecture about the fundamentals of economics. It certainly gave the students an insight into what life at university might look like!

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Finally we finished with an activity that was designed to show how bees and mathematics were connected. The activity was a lot of fun and was a great way to finish the day.

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