Students at Numurkah Secondary College are no mugs to the teaching expertise they have at hand.
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Innovative humanities teacher Lachlan Heard has been able to inspire part of the Year 9 cohort of 2023 to develop and build an air seeder for sowing a barley crop.
After a successful run during last year’s growing season, the next generation of students — the current middle years electives class — is ready to take the project further.
Mr Heard said the project had accommodated students of all abilities.
“Some students are better with a more hands-on approach to their learning,” he said.
“Therefore, we rotated the class with some going over to the tech wing to work on the air seeder and the rest doing theory in the classroom with me.”
Mr Heard was quick to praise his colleague who helped design the steel and polymer pipes which simultaneously sow seed four rows at a time.
“Technology teacher Ian Tilley is an engineering marvel,” he said.
“We have very skilled staff who are able to make practical interconnections between the curriculum and the relevant local farming industries.
“And (Mr Tilley) put a lot of technical work into the design.”
The seeds are blown into a Perspex regulator from a small battery-operated air blower.
Mr Tilley, who has been helping students with innovative practical projects for close to a decade, said the collaboration with students had been successful.
“The kids did a bit of maths to work out how much seed needed to go in and the rate of the air blower and even the speed of the ride-on mower which was pulling the seeder.”
Two kilometres per hour is the optimal speed for towing the seeder.
It took term one to complete the construction with a 50m strip of winter barley being sown at the start of term two.
By the end of November there was a healthy barley crop with minimal weeds.
“It was really impressive,” Mr Heard said.
Mr Heard’s expertise with teaching has a pragmatic basis.
“For many students, the industrial revolution and biomes areas of the humanities curriculum can be fairly tedious if they are purely theory based and taught 100 per cent in the classroom,” he said.
“So I was excited to have the opportunity to develop this elective subject.
“This ongoing project provides many opportunities to make adjustments for individual learning needs, strengthening student learning and engagement.”
Principal Cate Eddy eschewed any credit for her staff’s ingenuity and lauded the cross-curriculum nature of ‘rich task’ learning.
“I always say to teachers: ‘if this is something you have a passion for, then go with it’ and Lachlan has done an amazing job,” Mrs Eddy said.
“Even just today [March 19] they are visiting one of the student’s relative’s dairy farms and will finish the day with doing a bit of milking.
“It’s just great, isn’t it?”
‘Rich task’ learning is used in schools to engage students to become creative problem-solvers and is often used across the curriculum instead of within one subject.
“You can teach kids the knowledge and the skills in something, but if they don’t have the practical experience of it then it is not as useful,” Mrs Eddy said.
“But if you then go and actually apply the learning, then that’s gold.
“It’s also getting a bit cross-curriculum, so if you bring that project across into humanities then that engages our kids more.”
Student Ryder Dezwart said this year’s project would be different to last year.
“We are going to grow barley, wheat and canola,” Ryder said.
“And then we are going to make some comparisons between them.”
Ryder said he was inspired to do the subject because of his aunt’s history of growing produce.
“She likes to grow vegetables,” Ryder said.
“So that’s interested me, and I am also inspired to see what’s out there.”
Mr Heard said there had been a good response to the project among the college community.
“One former student from 20 years ago messaged in to say: ‘we didn’t do this sort of thing in my day!’.”