Starting our mining and minerals topic today (first time for them to cover this in class at all), so we wanted to have a quick warm-up that led into the content. We used several A3 maps of minesites and mineral distribution across WA from Dept of Mines, cut into 4-6 pieces like a jigsaw, and students each received one piece. Had to circulate in class to find the other pieces and create a full map with their new group. Asked them to see what minerals they could find, what was most common (iron ore) and could they find some unusual ones (yep, some we’d never heard of, eg tantalum!). 

We wanted to introduce the six stages of mining from the curriculum but also gauge what their prior knowledge was, so we gave them piles of post-it notes and asked them to write down one activity they knew happened at a mine site per post-it. Once they had a good collection we introduced the six stages, had an A3 page with each stage, then asked them to come and add their post-its to the right stage. Lots of good discussion and impressed at what they managed to come up with after a bit of coaxing!

Second part of this activity was to design their own miner - we had a worksheet template for them to come up with a name, info about their job, etc, mostly they focused on working hours. Time was short but managed to get Jimmy and Bibak to jump up for a quick recorded “podcast” interview about their miner with the lapel mics, good to see some enthusiasm. 

J-Rome who’d been a bit disruptive came up to the board with me to be in charge of pointing to which parts of the Creative Habits wheel we’d most focused on today. Spoke mostly about collaboration, especially from the warm up, and persistence - starting activities that they initially found hard but managed to get into with time.

Want to move on to set up their term project next week - discussed how much scaffolding they’ll need vs our desire to give them buy-in and autonomy! Aiming for a middle ground.

Happy to see that as we’d hoped, a number of them have relatives who work or have worked FIFO, and know something about it - or don’t know much about it and are now wondering (hopefully will go off and chat with these relatives!)

Slow to get into tasks but with help nearly all groups are working well and coming up with good ideas. They like to be up and about, so activities that include this are great. Anything that looks different to “normal book learning” is something that appeals.

Multiple shorter activities works well with them despite the short lesson length.

Will go deeper into FIFO life and set up their project next session. 

Thinking we will offer them some flexibility in their project choice eg podcast, video, could be roleplay etc. Tom thinks (I agree!) they’ll need a fairly scaffolded project to be able to make progress, but with room for their input.

Tom to source pins for our planned individual reflection wheels

Need to find out what we can get added to school Insta etc.