4 STEM term units. Teachers team-teach same unit; students rotate.
Food for Thought 10 weeks, 3 * 50 min lessons per week To foster an appreciation of safe, sustainable and successful food production
Project: create a new food product that is nutritious, produced from locally sustainable sources and can be easily and safely prepared. Design packaging for the product, including a nutrition label. Describe food handling and preparation to minimize foodborne illness. Design and produce advertising for a product launch.
Activities by week
- 1 Introduction to the unit
- 2 Research
- 3 Nutrition and food security
- 4 Microbiology
- 5 Food Preparation (cooking)
- 6 Food Packaging
- 7 Food Packaging
- 8 Food Advertising
- 9 and 10 Reflection
Home Sweet Home 10 weeks, 3 * 50 min lessons
With rising populations, we need homes that are sustainable, affordable and energy efficient.
Project: design and build a model of a small home that demonstrates principles of sustainability
Activities by week
- 1 to 3 Introduction to sustainable housing and research using wiki, Design house using minecraft, Guest speaker
- 4 to 6 Rotations: Solar cooker, infographics, data analysis, solar hot water system; light bulb out of soda bottle, make solar torch, 3D print house number in Tinkercad or SketchUp. LittleBits activity if time.
- 7, 8 Build house in groups
- 9, 10 Reflection: using digital software
Patterns of Life 10 weeks, 3 * 50 min lessons
Explore Mathematics as a means to describe aspects of our environment, as well as opportunities to plan and construct artistic models that are influenced by Maths in both physical and animated form.
Activities by week
- 1 Explore Maths in nature, tessellations, tangram art, 3D modelling, e.g. toothpicks and marshmallows,
- 2 Guided explorations of Maths in art and design: polyhedra, Golden Ratio, Mobius strip, Escher etc.
- 3 Scratch coding
- 4 Represent coding for the animated piece diagrammatically or in pseudocode
- 5 to 8 Develop the animated artwork in Scratch, peer review
- 9 and 10 Present the artworks in a “gallery” and reflection
Trash Into Treasure 10 weeks, 3 * 50 min lessons Greenhouse gases and global warming
- Carbon footprint
- Landfill and waste reduction
- Technology waste (e-waste) and implications and solutions (e.g. Mobile Muster, Reverse Garbage in Woolloongabba runs workshops)
- Waste management audit in a home or school context
- Design engineering process
- Sustainable fashion
- Fashion nanotechnologies
AHS Makerspace 