Outcomes
Data analysis
For the students, the biggest outcome was the sense of pride and achievement that came with seeing such a large project come to fruition with success. "I think they felt really proud at the end that they had done it, and after all the planning and preparing way way back I think that was pretty empowering for them. The kids loved the final day and the whole thing was such a big deal, almost like a school production, that I don't think they'll ever forget it. As for the pizzas, everybody loved them."
The project was even a total success as a business endeavour – the three classes repaid their loan to the PTFA, leaving them with a combined net profit of $826.54. What the syndicate will do with the money earned has not yet been decided.
Teamwork
The project also showed the students the benefits of teamwork in the best possible way, as participating in the production line gave them first-hand insight into how crucial each step was to the overall function of the production system. "They learned a lot about working through a process – that for something to work well there's often a process that you go through, it doesn't happen by itself," she says. "It starts with a need, then you have to do some surveying, you have to do some research, you have to figure out how you're going to design your product, what you're going to do and then you're going to have to do it."
Skills/ knowledge
Mock ups of pizzas
As this was the students' and the school's first experience with technological practice, the students learned the necessary vocabulary used throughout the unit and in future Technology projects. "A lot of it involved terminology and a lot of students weren't familiar with many of the terms, so we had to go through those sorts of terms so that when we talked about a mock-up and what that would involve, and then when they experienced it, they wouldn't be in the dark."
Jo stresses that the key to making learning stick was in making it relevant for the students. "All the knowledge that was learned and everything students did was purposeful because they needed to know a lot to produce this lunch for the rest of the school. The facts and the graphing skills they learnt, for example, were given much more purpose when used to analyse the survey to work out what sort of ingredients to use and then how much was required. You can give students lots of examples for that sort of thing but actually needing to know that information makes it so much more relevant."
"This unit involved nearly every curriculum area in some way, for example statistics and maths were hugely important for processing the information from the surveys and so on. In math, the nets (2D construction plans) that 3D shapes are made from were explored quite fully and that gave the students enough background to then help design the boxes that would package our pizzas, so that sort of tied in as well and then with the advertising its written language... it covered everything really."
Innovation in problem solving was also part of this unit. "With some of the problems that came up, I suggested that the kids telephone the people they had visited to see if they had encountered similar problems and if so, how did they solve them. That was more research to solve a problem, which teaches the kids that if it doesn't work it doesn't mean you can't do it, you just find a way around it. Recognising that you don't know something is part of the process. The next step is doing something constructive about it.
Recognition
Mock ups of pizzas
While the project's success speaks for itself, it was also rewarding for the teachers and students to receive recognition for all their hard work from parents at a final presentation. "It's funny, you do all this stuff from a very technological perspective, but what feeds back to parents isn't always that way. The presentation explained the whole process to them so they got it more, and one of the biggest comments that I heard from them was 'we had no idea it involved all of this'."
All of the successful outcomes that have arisen from the unit have done wonders for the recognition and understanding of Technology as a learning area within the school and Jo has hopes that this will be the start of a trend at St Michael's. "I think it gave Technology credibility and raised staff awareness of it, and I think they will be more passionate about teaching Technology from now on."
Lessons learned
While Jo and the students certainly enjoyed the experience, she acknowledges that the project was a huge undertaking that required extensive organisation. "Getting all the separate information from the different classes together and preparing that into one body of work was quite difficult – if it was just me reporting on mine it would have been a lot easier for me."
As the unit requires knowledge from so many other subjects, Jo also feels that cooperation and integration with other curriculum areas would be helpful for future projects, which would also help take the stress off teachers in terms of workload.
