Vinfizz

Jen Potts, Lyn Corbett, Leigh McKendry
Seddon School

Introduction

The Awatere Community, which forms the catchment area for Seddon School, is really two communities, farming and township. These two communities whilst they combine for many activities, are also quite separate. In 2003 children attending Seddon School are basically evenly represented from both groups and travel to school by us, bike or foot. The current roll is 121 students with the ethnicity groupings made up of six students identified as Māori, one student born in Belgium – classed as European, and the rest New Zealand European.

There is a diverse cross section of people living within the area, economically, socially and employment wise. Seddon Township used to be mainly low-income families, but that is rapidly changing through the increasing viticultural and horticultural use of the land.

However, whilst community members still have to travel to Blenheim for most services and employment, unless farm orientated, they have access to a wide range of social and recreational facilities, including most major sports facilities.

Year Group

Year 3 and 4

Pre-planning
The unit was to combine three goals covering cross curricular links in Social Studies, Technology, and English.

• Social Studies:
  We want to look at the role of the consumer and investigate that role in the development of product and/or service.
  We will use a small sample of consumers in our school community and find out their opinions on soft drinks presently available.
• Technology:
  We want to use the information we have collected to look at the views and feelings about technologically developed and commercially available soft drinks.
  We will then explore the possibility of an opportunity for a new drink based on grape juice, taking advantage of the rapidly changing face of the landscape in our area.
  We will then develop an action plan, identify and collect what we need and produce the drink to meet the need as we have seen it.
• English:
  We want to identify and discuss ways in which both words and pictures or images can be combined for a particular purpose, such as persuasion and how they can be made to fit a certain audience or age group, who might be our possible consumers.

Delivery – part one

The unit focusses on the Technology goal and the student's individual goal which results from it:

"We are trying to make a drink using grape juice for children our age."

Brainstorm for "Vinfizz"

Drinks children our age like- It shows us that L&P was the most liked drink and lemonade and Pepsi were the most disliked drinks.

Types of drinks children our age like the most

Drink our class liked best. This graph shows that Coke is the drink that most people like then it was L&P. Lemonade didn't get voted, so it was the one no one liked.

Delivery – part two

Before the visit to the winery we worked through with the children things that we already know and prepared questions to ask the owner during our visit.

The Winery – Things we already know

• Production relies on sun and rain at the right times.
• Frost is bad for grapes and expensive because farmers have to hire helicopters.
• They make wine.
• They use machines to make the wine.
• A vineyard can be big or small.
• Some wineries make wine, bottle it, and sell it at the winery.
• They have big storage tanks – or vats – to store the grape-juice and wine.
• They use big trucks to cart the grapes.
• Wine has an alcohol content.
• Grapes make their own yeast.
• Wineries sometimes use other people's grapes too.
• They use a special type of grape to make wine. Red and white wines use different grapes.
• Here are two types of wine:
  Chardonnay
  Sauvignon
  We think they are white wines.
• There are heaps of types of wine.
• Wines have different flavours, some taste like they have strawberries in them.
• Each winery has its own logo.
  
  You can see we already know a lot about wine and vineyards and Wineries

The Winery – Things we want to know

These are the questions we are asking when we visit The Winery

The Recipe

• 15 mls of grape juice
• 2-3 drops of essence of peppermint
• 15 mls of soda water
• Add extra sugar if sour

Outcome

All children passed gateways set up at varying degrees of competence but felt I didn't make some of them clear enough or specific enough.

The time for experimentation was too short. It would have been beneficial to have a helper to take a group separately to see that the follow ups were more concrete and to allow more question times. The children would have been better in smaller groups ie pairs but space and time were pressured.

The children really enjoy the practical side and developing problem solving areas.

Flow chart

(click to enarge)

Sparkling grape mint recipe

Hot shot recipe – Harriet Ryan