CROSS-DISCIPLINARY: PERSONAL LEARNING PLAN – Subject Type: Choice; Semester 2
The Personal Learning Plan (PLP) is a compulsory 10-credit subject undertaken at SACE Stage 1. Students at Port Augusta Secondary School will undertake the subject in Year 10 so they can plan for Years 11 and 12. Students must achieve a C grade or better to complete the subject successfully and gain their SACE. The PLP helps students to:
· Plan their personal and learning goals for the future
· Make informed decisions about their personal development, education, and training.
Developing goals for the future will engage students in activities such as:
· Selecting subjects, courses, and other learning relevant to pathways through and beyond school
· Investigating possible career choices
· Exploring personal and learning goals
The content in the Stage 1 Personal Learning Plan comprises:
· The Seven Capabilities
· Personal and Learning Goals
· Suggested Topics(e.g. Communication, Personal Development, Work Skills)
The Seven Capabilities
The purpose of the capabilities is to develop in students the knowledge, skills, and understanding to be successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
The capabilities that have been identified are:
1. Literacy
2. Numeracy
3. Information and communication technology capability
4. Critical and creative thinking
5. Personal and social capability
6. Ethical understanding
7. Intercultural understanding.
Personal and Learning Goals
Students identify, explore, and develop personal and learning goals, and strategies to achieve them.
They learn a variety of ways to plan to achieve their personal and learning goals by, for example:
· Selecting subjects, courses, and other learning relevant to pathways through and beyond school
· Investigating possible career choices.
· Capability or capabilities review their learning.
Evidence of Learning
The following assessment types enable students to demonstrate their learning in the Stage 1 Personal
Learning Plan:
· Assessment Type 1: Folio
· Assessment Type 2: Review
Students provide four pieces of evidence of their learning for assessment. Each assessment type should have a weighting of at least 20%.
Performance Standards
When the student completes the subject, the teacher makes a decision about the quality of the student’s learning by:
· Referring to the performance standards
· taking into account the weighting given to each assessment type
· assigning a subject grade between A and E.
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY: STEM – Subject Type: Choice; Semester
This course is for students who have a keen desire to apply their knowledge of science, technology and maths to create their own solutions to solve a range of real world problems. This solution may be purely a well-developed idea, or may be a physical solution that is created using the technology we have in the centre. It is a subject well suited to students who enjoy working on open ended projects in a collaborative environment.
Out of this World – Semester 1
In this unit students will explore whether we should explore mining of celestial bodies as an alternative to depleting Earth’s mineral resources. It will look at the opportunities and challenges that space mining would provide. The unit will look at what mineral resources are out there in space, the physics of rocket launches and the factors that influence the height achieved by a water rocket, and will culminate in an engineering project where students will design and construct a technology that could be used in remotely mining in space.
Stayin’ Alive – Semester 2
In this unit students will explore how we can effectively communicate scientific information to a range of stake holders in the midst of a crisis. It will look at how we can determine the best course of action for a particular crisis situation and how we can ensure that policy makers, and the general public get the right information so that they can make appropriate decisions. This unit will look at an investigation into a particular crisis situation and how science can be used to understand and respond effectively to it. The unit will also investigate how we can convey information to the scientific community and to policy makers so that appropriate decisions for the community can be made. Finally students will look at creating a social media campaign aimed educating the public on an appropriate course of action in response to the crisis.