Session 10 - Belmont City College Year 9 HASS - Jodie Davidson & Fiona Ball

1. Find the person whose birthday is closest to yours (without words)

2. One of you will be given a tool, one a piece of cardboard

3. Using only one hand each, cut a piece of cardboard 10cm x 10 cm and another 13 x 13cm

Mini Urban Farming

1. The small piece of cardboard is the floor plan of your house, the large is the size of your property

2. In your pair, discuss crop yield (enough food for each season), crop rotation, maintaining soil quality and sustainability (water, food, waste), cost 

3. How would you design a garden to grow food for a family of four in this limited space?

4. You have limited materials - cardboard, toothpicks, string, nuts, grass, seeds, masking tape, check for plasticine

On the board are two creative habits - persistence and discipline

1. What is an example of how your partner used this in today’s session?

2. Write it on the board or write it onto a post it note.

Successes

• Problem solving, particularly with how to get the tape off the roll and how to stick things together

• The overall creativity - chickens and chicken coops, roof top gardens, vertical gardens, solar panels, a windmill to pump water, water tanks, livestock fences, double stories, bird netting to protect the crops, composting, a raised house with a duck pond underneath

• Use of materials

• Coming up with their own ideas and not copying from other groups. Each property design is different

• Reflecting about how partners used a creative habit today resulted in a lot more examples of discipline and persistence. There was also almost no repetition

Challenges

• Definitely some students fudging birth dates in order to sit together.

• Masking tape was temperamental 

• The limited knowledge of what vegetables look like when they are growing

Each group worked productively with only one group of three in which collaboration from one person could have been better. We are going to extend the project into next week, even though the grass will die so that we can consider crop loss, particularly for monoculture. The making was really engaging as this is not something that they usually have the time or resources to do.

Tuesday - continue building after reflecting on knowledge from the week. Revisit crop yield, rotation, orientation, water, maintaining soil quality

Wednesday - You want the government to invest in your design for all first home buyers. How will it reach targets? How will this help with cost of living and the impact of large scale farming and food production