TAS/VET Faculty

Term 2 has been such a busy term! Year 12 are in the midst of their Major Works and their Personal Interest Projects. All Year 12 students in all our courses will be starting to prepare for their upcoming Trial Exams and we wish them the very best of luck. 

Most of the students have been working diligently to have their projects at the 90% completion stage by the end of the term. There are a large variety of projects, and I must congratulate those students who have been working solidly from the beginning of the process. I am confident the students that have been working continuously and abiding to course requirements and time frames will be rewarded with very good HSC results at the end of the year. 

Year 12 Timber are busily working on their major projects. With the due date closely approaching Miss Reynen will be offering holiday classes to support students. The Year 12 Engineering Studies class are currently completing the Aeronautical Engineering module. This module focuses on how planes fly and working out the mathematics behind them flying. The Year 12 Society and Culture class are well into the writing of their Personal Interest Projects and working very diligently on these. The projects must be at 90% completion by the end of Term 2. In Week 1 of the school holidays I will be offering workshops at school to support students in completing their projects. The Year 12 Society and Culture class have completed Assessment Task 3 on Popular Culture. They have all done such an amazing job with this task and I am so very proud of their efforts. 

Year 12 SDD and Mrs Hogan have finished their Major Projects, creating a game based off a board or card game. They have successfully used their skills in coding to create some amazing games. Most students used the programming language, Python. Well done to all students, now to work and study for the Trial and HSC exams!

This term has seen the creation of a very exciting cross faculty project. Our project was to plan, design and plant an Indigenous Garden and Paddock to Plate experience and this has now come to fruition at HKHS. Mrs Lousie Watkiss  Head Teacher Science, Mr JP Grant our Primary Industries teacher and I have worked together on this project. This is very exciting, and we will now have access to Indigenous plants in our practical lessons in Food Technology lessons and the Science classes will now have access to Indigenous plants and ingredients to use and to understand how Indigenous plants can be used for medicinal purposes. 

The next stage of the project will be to create laser designed name and information labels for each plant. We intend to make this student centred, and the information will be on a QR code. Students and teachers will be able to use their mobile phones to scan the labels and see the information about each plant.   

Year 12 Hospitality students continue to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in their practical lessons, and they have been very busy designing virtual cafes and we look forward to seeing what creative and innovative cafes they design! 

Year 12 Retail have been busy completing their last 2 Cluster Tasks, Cluster F and G. Part of the Cluster F task was visual merchandising. The class created a beautiful Easter window. 

Retail Services Visual

Merchandising Windows   

Year 11 Retail have just started to create some visual merchandising windows. Their first effort was a window to advertise Special Ed's Op Shop for Week 9. They did an excellent job!!

The two Year 11 Hospitality classes and Mrs Ofahenguage have been busy practising and perfecting their espresso coffee skills and this term they have been making a range of beautiful sandwiches, muffins and slices. 

Work placement this year for our Year 11 VET students has reverted to 70 hours in total for this cohort. Work Placement is coming up in Term 3 for all our VET students in Year 11 and students can be Recognised for Prior Learning (RPL) if they already have a job in the respective industry to the VET class, they are in. If students wish to RPL their hours they will need to speak to their teachers and fill out the paperwork. Students can also self-source various businesses if they wish. If students would like to self-source, they need to see their teacher for the correct form to use. 

Primary Industries students in both Year 11 and 12 have been experiencing the challenges of farming. The constant rain turned the farm into a swamp, destroyed crops, reduced sheep and cattle grazing and made any movement around the farm extremely challenging. With gum boots adorned generous mulch deliveries from Ben Hastings Tree Services were quickly shifted to create raised pathways and some hope of sowing crops and safely accessing paddocks. We shall wait and see how the crops turn out! 

Year 12 have been busy completing their fencing unit and have constructed a high-quality hardwood and star picket fence good enough to contain our three heifers and the newly born lambs. Year 12 would like to thank farm assistant Geoff Brown for his support and quality control during fence construction. Year 12 now have only one unit left of their Certificate II in Agriculture – plant propagation.

A big thanks to three Year 11 students – Charlie Court, Kasm Al Rubayi and Jake Matthews for their physical strength and determination in helping injured mamma pig move to a safe, dry spot where she could recover from her injury, you were absolute champions. These boys were knee deep in mud and had to push and coerce a stubborn and scared mamma pig!!

This is a picture of Kyle Dowling, the last to complete his work placement in Term 1. Kyle worked with racehorses, ensuring they were fed, watered, washed and moved safely from stables to racecourse.

Year 11 Timber and Mr Ashby are currently building a small vanity unit. The drawer that they built earlier in the year will also be utilised in the unit they are building.  

The Year 11 Society and Culture class have just completed their second assessment task and I must congratulate the students on their fantastic achievement in this task. Their responses were conceptually rich with synthesised and sustained judgements and substantiated with consistent relevant strong examples throughout their writing.

Year 11 Software Design Development and Mrs Hogan are currently learning about the System Development Approaches and the stages involved. They are currently working on learning new skills in the programming language, Python, and are creating a text-based game. Students are encouraged to discover ways they can make a text-based game fun and exciting while learning the developmental process of designing and programming games.

The Year 11 Engineering Studies class with Miss Reynen have finished the core modules and are now moving on to the specialised modules and now focusing on braking systems.

Mrs Ofahenguage’s Stage 5 Hospitality class have been very making coffees, coffees and more coffees! This is the competency in Cluster B. Students have been very enthusiastic to show off their beverage skills in preparing and serving espresso coffee. With only a limited number of coffee machines, Year 10 have been working in groups rotating through practicals, espresso coffee instruction and theory to gain skills in all aspects of hospitality. This unit will continue over several terms, overlapping with other units as students practice these competencies. Sandwiches, is now, too in our sights, and have joined the practical rotation forming the basis of Cluster C – Prepare and serve sandwiches.

This term the Year 10 Food Technology class and Mrs Dekalb studied a unit of work called Food for Special Occasions. In this unit the students explore a range of special occasions including social, cultural, religious, historical and family. They examine small and large-scale catering establishments. The students then plan and prepare safe food for special occasions, demonstrating appropriate food-handling and presentation skills, food needs, the role of nutritionally modified foods, and the role support networks play for individuals with specific food needs. In the practical environment, the students made menu items that catered for vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, low fat, sugar free and reduced salt diets.

Mr Ashby and his Stage 5 classes have been busy making pencil boxes, gaming shelves and learning how to turn timber!!

        Year 10 Food Technology Crazy Shakes

Mrs Dekalb’s Year 9 FT have been delving into bush tucker, early Aussie foods and multicultural influences on Australian contemporary cuisine. With a huge array of practical's from all over the world, Year 9 have become ‘Foodie Globetrotters’. Along the way, they have gained cultural knowledge of Australia’s first people, their hunting, gathering and farming techniques and the quality of their balanced nutritional diet.

Year 9 200-hour Food Technology in action

This semester Stage 5 100 hour class and Mrs McTeigue have been studying a unit of work called Food Equity. The Food Equity unit focused on learning about access to safe and sufficient food as a global issue of concern and how the production and distribution of food is affected by many factors. In practical lessons, students created many different cultural dishes from staple ingredients. The Stage 5 class have completed a practical assessment early this term where they had to plan, prepare and present an Omelette, the class did themselves proud and took this task so seriously and might I say their omelettes were perfect!!

Stage 5 100-hour Food Technology

Miss Reynen’s Year 10 iSTEM class are currently studying the unit Design for Space and are using the Lego EV3 kits to build a robot suitable to explore Mars.

The Stage 4 Technology Mandatory classes with Mrs Ofahengaue, Mrs De Kalb, Mrs McTeigue, Miss Reynen, Mrs Hogan and Mr Ashby have been enjoying and embracing their lessons. The students have been learning about Material Textiles and Wood, Food and Agriculture and Digital Technologies.

Stage 4 Technology Mandatory in Action!

The Year 7 and 8 Technology Mandatory Digital Technology classes and Mrs Hogan have been completing coding their games in Scratch. Students showed off their skills they have learnt this year, in creating some amazing and fun games. 

Year 7 Designing QR Codes

Mrs McTeigue‘s and Mrs De Kalb‘s Year 7 classes have visited the Ag farm this semester as part of the Agriculture and Food Technologies in Technology Mandatory. The students have had a ball!! 

They have designed and made a portable self-watering plant pot and they have planted their herbs. Each week we have visited the farm recorded plant growth, experienced watching a baby chick break out of its shell and of course played with the baby chicks!! The students have experienced a real paddock to plate experience and have made delicious Bruschetta highlighting the herbs that have been grown.

Stage  4 Technology Mandatory at the Farm!

These holidays will be invaluable for our Year 12 students to work on perfecting and completing their HSC major projects which are all due for submission in Term 3. Please discuss your projects with your teachers before the holidays about any work that may be needed. Also, please check with your teachers about attending the holiday workshops they are holding. These are designed by the teachers and are invaluable in helping students complete their projects. 

On behalf of the TAS/VET Faculty we wish all our students and their families a safe, relaxing and happy holiday. 

Mrs Caroline McTeigue

Head Teacher TAS/VET