Students sharpen skills
THE Junior School at Fahan School, offers a small, secure setting that provides girls with a sense of belonging and many opportunities to engage with the wider School Community.
By the time they reach Year 6, the girls are involved in higher order thinking, providing them with deep, lasting and transferable knowledge, preparing them well for Year 7 and beyond.
In their Positive Education lessons, the Year 6 girls have been focusing on developing their leadership skills and recognising that, as leaders of the Junior School, they can all be role models and guide others daily in different ways.
“The girls have multiple group projects throughout the year that allows them to develop their skills in both teamwork and leadership with the goal of being inspirational and kind role-models in their everyday life,” Year 6 teacher Kathryn Lumsden-Steel said.
While working on their physical science unit on electricity, the Year 6 girls worked on a group task where they undertook the challenge of making a light bulb work with the aid of a battery.
A previous unit of work on energy sources in Australia then sparked questions about the sustainability of light bulbs, as well as the energy resources in Australia.
Discussions then developed on how energy efficient are our homes?
“As the girls raised these questions it was important to further develop their knowledge and understanding of such challenges that lie ahead for the current generation,” Year 6 teacher Ingrid Heather said.
“The decision was made to include a basic house design using renewable resources, while considering what is needed to create an energyefficient home in order to promote some higher order thinking.”
The girls created an extensive checklist of considerations consisting of lighting, windows, doors, exterior materials, power sources, direction of the build, water consumption, insulation, floor surface and the energy star rating of appliances.
The unit not only consisted of learning in science and design technologies but also integrated mathematics to solve problems involving measurement.
“We could design any house we wanted and we chose to have ours built near Cradle Mountain, using the nearby hydro water as it is a renewable energy source,” Year 6 student Ella Baird said.
“It was important to make sure that we all listened to each other and that everyone had an opportunity to share their ideas and work together to complete the task,” Year 6 student Chloe Groom said.