Science
Updated: Feb 2000
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School Snapshots - South Fremantle SHS
  There are two primary areas of focus for the integration of Science, Mathematics, and Technology & Enterprise and other subject areas at South Fremantle Senior High School. The first area is the school's Academic Talented Program (ATP) for Science and Mathematics and the second area is the school's Marine Studies program. Computing is very well integrated into the ATP and mainstream students' Mathematics lessons. There are three rooms with computers in the school, one just for Mathematics classes. The ATP students do a compulsory computing unit in Year 8 and they use the Internet extensively to access information during Mathematics lessons. There are computers with CD-ROMs available in the library for students to use for projects and research. The use of graphics calculators is being integrated into the upper school Mathematics and Physics courses. South Fremantle Senior High School has had a Marine Studies program for more than 6 years. The Marine Studies program is not taught as a separate entity to the other subject areas but is a component of the regular subject courses. Marine Studies teacher, Alan Wolfe, wrote and published an outcomes-based textbook on marine studies which is used by the 180 students in the program at each of the Year 8, 9 and 10 levels. Each of the subject areas of Science, Technology & Enterprise, Society & Environment and Health & Physical Education teaches one specified unit of marine studies to each year level each year. For example, the Year 8 students study weather and oceans in Society & Environment; dangerous creatures, seawater properties, pests and seabirds in Science; boating in Technology & Enterprise and water safety and snorkelling in Physical Education. The Year 9 marine studies students do coastlines, trashing the sea and shipwrecks in Society & Environment; waves, currents, tides and seawater quality in Science; fishing, fisheries and food from the sea in Technology & Enterprise and first aid in Physical Education. The marine studies coordinator says that some of the teachers in the English and Mathematics departments also are marinising their subjects. For example the students might do marine topic essays in English.
The three main difficulties that Marilyn, an ATP teacher, sees with trying to establish integration across the Mathematics, Science, and Technology & Enterprise learning areas are time, funding and timetable. Teachers are willing to try integration but don't have the time to communicate with other learning area teachers and prepare projects on integrated topics. Marilyn says that because teachers are busy it is difficult to expect them to meet during DOTT or at other times. Money is available for the ATP program, however, there is not enough to provide relief teachers so that the regular teachers can plan integrated teaching and learning activities. The timetable also does not allow the teachers of one group of students to meet at a particular time during the week. Teachers are addressing the integration issue within the constraints of resourcing and the introduction of the outcome statements. The marine studies coordinator, Alan Wolfe, said that he lobbied teachers in each of the departmental areas to take on part of the Marine Studies program. He said that because these students tend to be bright and enthusiastic it wasn't difficult to convince the teachers that the marine studies units would be good to volunteer for. He said that the difficulty is that teachers sometimes feel inadequate about their background because marine studies is not in their formal training.
Ideally, Marilyn would like to have the ATP students continue with their separate subjects of Mathematics, Science, and Technology & Enterprise to ensure that they build up appropriate content knowledge and skills by the time they get to upper school. In conjunction, one integrated project per semester would help to place in context the theory and content the students had been learning in the separate subjects. The school found with their Academic Extension Program (students internally selected for this program compared with externally selected ATP students) that when they did considerable project type work a lot of content had not been covered by the time they were in Year 11. The students could catch up because they were academically talented but the teachers felt this was not a desirable situation. These ATP students now do a set of core content with all other students doing Science in conjunction with more student-centred open investigations.
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