Science
Updated: Feb 2000
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Case Studies - Leonora District High School
  Planning Around a Theme - Observations According to the Science teacher, general planning for the whole year, taking into consideration the themes and the science strands, is the key to designing programs of work for the students.
The Science teacher found that not all the themes selected for the school plan were suitable for what he wanted to do in science.
The Mathematics teacher sometimes found it difficult to plan around the themes because of the cumulative nature of Mathematics. Chance and data, surveys and graphing fitted into most themes, but with some parts of the Mathematics program she could only relate bits and pieces to the theme, and at times she had to ignore the theme altogether because it didn't fit the Mathematics program without being overly contrived.
The Olympics was used as a theme for all levels in third term, 1996. This theme coincided with the Atlanta Olympics Games and many of the students in the school were interested in sport. It was highly successful. The Olympics were going on at the time and all teachers were involved in sitting down and linking all the subject areas up. The teachers planned their subject programs around the theme and, in conjunction, an integrated project comprising components from each of the subject areas was developed. The project comprised a brief that required students to design uniforms for the Australian Olympic team members.
In Science, the level three students studied forces including friction and acceleration, drugs in sport, and speed and timing devices. Classroom activities that explicitly linked the science topic to the theme of the Olympics included:
The Science program also included a section on drugs in sport where the students were involved in examining the short and long term effects of drugs on the body and a discussion of an ABC's Four Corners program and the associated issues and values of drugs in sport. The Science program also covered speed and acceleration and included an investigation of electronic timing devices in sport.
Technology & Enterprise and the Olympics At the time, the school did not have a specialist teacher for Technology and Enterprise, so there was not a specific program from this learning area. Aspects of Technology & Enterprise were covered in the science program when students measured the amount of friction of shoes on a variety of surfaces and through an activity on miniature sports equipment. This activity was called a Mini-Olympics and the students had to design, make and appraise a miniature javelin, discus, shuttlecock or hammer using paper, paper plates, corks, feathers and wool. The students were required to write a report including research on their choice of equipment, drawings of prototype designs, tests to see which prototype worked best and why and a discussion of factors which affect the pieces of equipment such as gravity, air, angle of throw and friction. The students also were required to give an oral presentation to the class explaining their design and investigation.
In Mathematics, the level three students studied area, statistics, graphs and central tendencies (mean, mode, median) largely from the chance and data strand of the mathematics learning area. The teacher developed and consolidated the skills the students had learnt by applying them to activities linked to the Olympics theme. This included surveys conducted with local people on their opinions of the Australian flag and uniform design. The data from the surveys were collected, analysed and presented in graphical form by the students.
Other Learning Areas and the Olympics In the Art & Design learning areas students were involved in designing a mural for the local recreation centre which encompassed a great moments in sport theme using themselves as the star athlete and familiar faces in the crowd. In English, the students studied the novel Dougy, about an athlete and investigated and designed a flag for the Australian team competing in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. The task included explaining the concepts and symbols used in the design of the flag and uniform. In Studies of Society & Environment a link was established between the school theme of Olympics and the topic of Ancient Greece through the origins of the Olympic games. This was followed by a more detailed look at Ancient Greek Society under the topics of lifestyle, government, geography, religion and links between Ancient Greece and the modern world. The sub strand of Understanding the Past was the main evaluation tool for this topic and the Investigation, Communication and Participation strands also were used throughout the topic to assess students' skills in mapping and graphing.
Some of the activities explicitly linked to the Olympics theme from each of the learning area programs.
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