Cannon Hill Anglican College

Our recent Santa’s Workshop was a lovely, fun and innovative way to finish off Term 2, and brought big smiles to the faces of both Prep and Year 8 students, as well as the staff involved.

This year, the Industrial Technology and Design Faculty (ITD) adopted the new ACARA National Curriculum for Technology into its teaching and learning, which meant reorganising our Year 8 offering. In previous years, Year 8 students took the subject for only a term. Now, this has been extended to a semester, with three groups of students experiencing work in the context of Materials, Digital Technologies and Engineering. The semester culminates in the Design and Make a Children’s Toy Challenge. In the new curriculum, there is an increased focus on the target audience for the design; in our case, pre-school aged children.

With our very own Mr Burke bearing a more-than-passing resemblance to The Man in Red himself, we came up with a creative way to test our prototype toys; two Prep classes were invited to come and experience Santa’s Workshop!

The Year 8 students loved the idea, and embraced it by playing their part as Santa’s Elves, making toys for Christmas! It gave Prep students the opportunity to interact with Year 8 students, visit the ‘big kid’ classrooms and get them excited to design and make things for themselves. Year 8 students relished the opportunity to demonstrate the skills they learn in ITD and show the Preps around the workshop. We plan to do something similar at the end of each semester.

For the full gallery of images from the day, please click here.

Rob Hawkin
Secondary Teacher – ITD

Posted with permission
Original article published here