Intended learning aims & desired outcomes
This i-Quest has been designed to develop students sense of community and commemoration and we have focussed on a current local and national issue. We have designed our i-Quest from a retrospective view point, after the Black Saturday bushfire, to enable students to examine the aftermath and consequences of natural disasters on residents, the environment and the community.
Our aim is for students to develop an understanding of natural disasters such as bush fires and the environmental, social and economic impact of these. Students will be exposed to people's reactions to natural disasters, including the preparation for and management of, together with the repercussions and consequences three years on from the tragedy.
We also chose a task where students could actively participate in their school and community through the design of our rich task, where students are to create the new outdoor area which would be implemented in their school including a memorial to commemorate Black Saturday.
Our i-Quest is intended to provide students with a relevant, current and authentic learning experience that focusses on the concepts of community and commemoration and allows them time to reflect and develop a deeper understanding and empathy towards those who have experienced a natural disaster.
Within our i-Quest students will investigate:
- A significant natural disaster that occurs across Australia and the impacts of this on residents, the community and the environment.
- Environmental issues and possible solutions for example in relation to native flora and fauna and ways in which to protect it.
- Ideas of commemoration and memorials that reflect and convey community values.
Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS) Level 4
Discipline Based Learning
Art
Through the creation of the memorial students:
- Investigate a range of traditional and contemporary arts forms, styles, media, materials, equipment and technologies in the arts disciplines.
- Learn about ways to design, improvise, represent, interpret, make and present arts works that communicate feelings.
- Experiment with imaginative and innovative ways of generating ideas and manipulating arts elements, principles and/or conventions to explore the potential of ideas, gaining inspiration from a broad range of sources, including arts works from different cultures, styles and historical contexts.
- Learn to evaluate their own and other people’s arts works and understand the function of art in the community.
English
Through students creation of a newspaper article, brochure and accompanying explanations for their graphic organisers, memorial and final rich task students:
- Compose, comprehend and respond to an expanding range of texts in print and audiovisual and electronic forms.
- Explore the relationship between the purpose and audience of texts and their structures and features.
- Learn how to draw evidence from texts to support their points of view.
- Engage in exploratory talk to share and clarify their ideas, to formulate simple arguments and to seek the opinions of others and they participate in oral interactions for different purposes.
- Begin to identify opinions offered by others, propose other viewpoints, and extend ideas in a constructive manner.
The Humanities - Geography
Throughout the processes and tasks of the i-Quest students:
- Investigate the significant natural process of bushfire that operates across Australia and how people react to them, including their preparation for, and management of, natural disasters.
- Explore environmental issues and consider possible solutions to current and future challenges.
- Develop mapping skills and use conventional geographic language, including scale, compass points for direction. They learn about and interpret their location relative to other places. They begin to identify features on maps, satellite images, and oblique photographs and use maps at different scales to locate places.
Mathematics
- Use metric units to estimate and measure length, perimeter, area.
- Create two-dimensional representations of three dimensional shapes and objects found in the surrounding environment.
- Students use the ideas of size, scale, and direction to describe and create relative location and objects in maps.
Interpersonal Development
- They accept and display empathy for the points of view and feelings of their peers and others.
- Students work effectively in different teams and take on a variety of roles to complete tasks of varying length and complexity. They work cooperatively to allocate tasks and develop timelines. Students accept responsibility for their role and tasks. They explain the benefits of working in a team. They provide feedback to others and evaluate their own and the team’s performance.
Personal Learning
- Students explore individual strategies and skills that assist in their learning. With support, they consider a range of approaches to learning and reflect on how the approaches they use influence the quality of their learning. They explore learning styles which may not be their preferred style and consider why such experimentation is an important aspect of their learning.
Civics & Citizenship
- Students research the issue of bushfire as a natural disaster and they consider actual and possible actions by citizens and nations in response to the issue.
- Students explore ways in which they can actively participate in their school and community.
Communication
- Students use their understanding of communication conventions to communicate effectively with peers and to respond appropriately when they are part of an audience. They practise listening attentively to identify and communicate main points to others.
- Students summarise and organise ideas and information, logically and clearly in a range of presentations. They identify the features of an effective presentation and adapt elements of their own presentations to reflect them. Using provided criteria, they evaluate the effectiveness of their own and others’ presentations.
- Students experience a variety of aural, written and visual communication forms in both formal and informal settings.
Design, Creativity and Technology
- Students generate and communicate alternative design ideas in response to a design brief and use words, labelled sketches and models, to demonstrate that they are aware of environmental and social constraints.
- Students reflect on their designs as they develop them and use evaluation criteria, identified from design briefs, to justify their design choices.
ICT
- Students safely and independently use a range of skills, procedures, equipment and functions to process different data types and produce accurate and suitably formatted products to suit different purposes and audiences. They use design tools to represent how solutions will be produced and the layout of information products.
- Students use ICT tools and techniques that support the organisation and analysis of concepts, issues and ideas and that allow relationships to be identified and inferences drawn from them.
Thinking Processes
- Students develop their own questions for investigation, collect relevant information from a range of sources and make judgments about its worth. They distinguish between fact and opinion.
- Students use creative thinking strategies to generate imaginative solutions when solving problems. They demonstrate creativity in their thinking in a range of contexts and test the possibilities of concrete and abstract ideas generated by themselves and others.
- Students use a broad range of thinking processes and tools, and reflect on and evaluate their effectiveness.
Design, Creativity and Technology
- Students generate and communicate alternative design ideas in response to a design brief and use words, labelled sketches and models, to demonstrate that they are aware of environmental and social constraints.
- Students reflect on their designs as they develop them and use evaluation criteria, identified from design briefs, to justify their design choices.
ICT
- Students safely and independently use a range of skills, procedures, equipment and functions to process different data types and produce accurate and suitably formatted products to suit different purposes and audiences. They use design tools to represent how solutions will be produced and the layout of information products.
- Students use ICT tools and techniques that support the organisation and analysis of concepts, issues and ideas and that allow relationships to be identified and inferences drawn from them.
Thinking Processes
- Students develop their own questions for investigation, collect relevant information from a range of sources and make judgments about its worth. They distinguish between fact and opinion.
- Students use creative thinking strategies to generate imaginative solutions when solving problems. They demonstrate creativity in their thinking in a range of contexts and test the possibilities of concrete and abstract ideas generated by themselves and others.
- Students use a broad range of thinking processes and tools, and reflect on and evaluate their effectiveness.
