So when you blow it up, you've got the force
of the balloon going that way.
Then it propels it then to go that way.
So the equal and opposite forces.
My name's Tash Colson
and I work at Centralian Senior College here in Alice Springs.
My subject areas are 10 science, 11 maths,
12 food and hospitality and 11 numeracy.
The Year 10 science class
is all about making it relevant to the students.
One thing about Year 10 is the students have to be here.
So you find, in some ways of planning and preparation,
you need to make it quite engaging for the students
that actually don't want to be here and want to be out working.
When I'm looking at curriculum and doing my lesson planning,
I need to think - how are they going to use this?
How is this going to be relevant?
When we talked about inertia, which was force,
we did a prac on crash test dummies,
where they actually modelled little crash test dummies and did it.
Then we likened it to car safety.
So things to get them engaged and interested actually in the content.
As the balloon gets bigger,
it's harder to deliver a full breath into it.
Suggest what this would do to the flight time.
So if you still can't put big breaths into it,
are you going to have more time in the air?
Um, not necessarily.
Yeah. Because why, do you think?
So the questions with the balloon rocket prac will be more...
Because it's a design prac, it will be more like guiding.
It will be more, sort of, you know, how is that going to work?
What if we had another balloon? What if we added some weight?
So there will be more open-ended questions
to maybe get them to start thinking.
-I hope it works this time. -Get set, go.
-Oh, it didn't work. -Oh, damn.
It did work, it did work.
I didn't say anything about using another balloon to take it back.
All I said was it has to go back to its original starting point.
To try and get a bit of that student participation,
especially with my Year 10s, I like to pose a real-life question
and get their feedback.
-Who plays tennis? -I do.
Yep. Do you think that's Newton's Third Law?
So you hit the ball, OK, with your bat.
The ball hits a bat. Then what does the ball do?
Working in groups I think is good.
Because being by themselves, sometimes, "Oh, I don't know."
Where, with a group, they can bounce ideas off each other.
The purpose of the fishing line
is to help guide the balloon in one direction
because the back of the balloon - you know how it's all floppy at the end?
Every time it just flops around, it keeps changing its direction.
And it's just lovely when they're planning to actually hear them
talking about, "Oh, do you think this will work?"
"Oh, no, I don't think that will work. Let's use this."
So it's just that conversation of working together and trying things.
If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter, do you know what I mean?
They have more to write up in their prac then.
I saw some absolutely amazing problem-solving
and some really great thinking-out-of-the-box type stuff,
especially for number 14 where you had to, you know, return
the balloon to its original position.
It was great. Some ideas I hadn't even thought of so really well done.
The task we did with the Year 12 cooking
was themed around a group task called the modern Australian dinner.
Them actually taking that role and them actually planning it,
actually engaged them as well too because they were going to eat it.
They had to prepare it, they had to give me their recipe list.
They had to present it.
That gives them life skills past school as well too.
We started off doing a lot of formative work
on what some of the tasks would look like.
So they've had a lot of practice
and a lot of, I could say, success in doing those tasks.
Then when we went to do the summative tasks,
they had a feeling that they could actually do them.
So that helped them in being engaged and staying on task.
As a group, because this is our collaborative task,
who has taken the lead, do you think?
Or is it...? How is that going?
I think everyone has worked really well together so it's been good.
And I think because of the planning that you did prior,
where you allocated the tasks, that was really helpful too, wasn't it?
The Year 12s, I think because they're young adults...
Well, what I like to do at the start of the year
is a lot of relationship stuff.
Just in terms of - have you got a part-time job? What are you into?
You know, so I know a lot about what they do.
That actually helps, you know,
when you're drawing from their specific content.
I make sure I at least talk to everybody every single lesson
or make a point that I go to everybody
and just touch base - how are you going?
Have you got any problems with that?
-How would I word that? -Oh, it's a bit tricky, isn't it?
You could say, maybe, it gets to a point
where you can put no more air into the balloon.
-Which limits its flight. -Fantastic.
That's my goal is to touch base with everybody.
Have a conversation so at least they know
that they're feeling valued in that class.