National Science Week

National Science Week

National Science Week is an annual celebration of Science and Technology, and ‘Food: Different By Design’ is the school theme for National Science Week in 2021.

This is an important theme for our teachers and students which provides an opportunity for us to explore and focus on sustainable food futures.  Every day we must eat.  Food is our fuel for life.  When we consider how to eat, we also need to think about why we need to eat well. 

Curriculum Focus

This week our teachers will be facilitating a variety of student activities that link to the Australian Curriculum for science, technologies, mathematics and the arts. There will also be  many opportunities to integrate the Australian Curriculum’s General Capabilities and Cross-curriculum Priorities into our schools’ learning programs.

Learning through Creativity (Science Week)

Groups of students in Middle and Senior Years explored ‘Food by Design’ through creativity with modelling clay. The students had lots of fun creating mini fruit bowls using various products of modelling clay. During the lesson the students explored the different forms and colours of various fruits and vegetables and then decided on their own combination to create a fun and colourful display of fruit or vege's in a miniature bowl.

Toffee Apple Science - Middle Years Learning Community

The students in the Middle Years Learning Community enjoyed the science of making Toffee Apples with their teachers last week for Science Week.

As the theme for Science week was 'Food By Design', the students were given a special treat of watching and learning about the process of making toffee and enjoyed eating yummy apples once complete. 

An ENORMOUS THANK YOU to Kate Radevski and Radevski Coolstores for providing our school with the delicious Pink Lady Apples, they were perfect! Grateful Thanks!

Making toffee apples taught our students all about reversible change. This type of change is when a substance is able to go from being a liquid to a solid and then back again.  Substances can change from one state to another by different processes.  

The mixture of sugar (dissolved), water, vinegar and red food colouring created a liquid toffee. The process of creating a liquid was obtained by adding heat over a stove top. Once we dipped the apples into the toffee it became hard and formed a solid. The process of forming a solid was obtained by the toffee cooling in the open air.  

Toffee is a great example of reversible change because if we were to reheat the toffee, it would change from being a solid back into a liquid again.  The students offered other examples of reversible change that they knew of.  This included chocolate, water, ice-cream and some metals.  

We hope the students went home full of happy stories to share about the wonderful science experience!