Year 7 Product Design: Eco-Torches

In Product Design this year, our Year 7s have been working hard on being "green designers"! They have been investigating how to design for a sustainable future and have been learning how long products take to decompose in a landfill. This was quite an eye-opening experience for them - did you know a plastic bottle takes 450 years to decompose? Did you know that glass may never decompose? 

Using this knowledge, they designed and made eco-friendly torches made from old products and materials. Some students chose to use materials that decompose quickly if the torch were ever to be disposed of, and others decided to save materials from a landfill site that are known to take a long time to decompose.

Here are some of the products they designed:

Be on the look out for more projects from our students soon and updates on other exciting things happening in the D&T department! Please feel free to leave us any comments, we'd love to hear from you!

Year 7 D&T Wooden Project

Year 7 have been working hard making some creative wooden toys this term! They have been effectively applying a variety of skills and techniques in working with timber to produce really high quality products. Check out some of the excellent examples they've been designing and making so far:

We love how each one is unique and students are challenging themselves with the complexity of their designs! Be on the look out for more projects from our students and updates on other exciting things happening in the D&T department. Please feel free to leave us any comments, we'd love to hear from you!

Year 7 CED: The Chocolate Factory Experience Part 2!

Last week saw 7x spend their Curriculum Enrichment Day doing the Chocolate Factory Experience! Just like 7Y did back in January, which you can read about here, students took on their own roles in the factory gaining experience in 4 different areas: making the chocolates in Food, making the origami boxes in Product Design, making the labels in Textiles and the promotional key ring in Resistant Materials.

Students did a fantastic job and many Employee of the Day awards were handed out. Here are some pictures of the boxes created throughout the day:

Well done to all who took part, and we are so glad to hear students enjoyed themselves so much. We look forward to doing this again with next year's year 7 groups too!

Year 7 CED: The Chocolate Factory Experience

Last week, 7y spent their Curriculum Enrichment Day experiencing batch production by working in a chocolate factory in D&T! There were 4 stations throughout the day: making the chocolates in Food, making the origami boxes in Product Design, making the labels in Textiles and making a promotional key ring in Resistant Materials.

All students were responsible for one area of the production line to end up with a batch of over 100 chocolate boxes by the end of the day. Some students even took on extra responsibilities to work as managers and quality control inspectors during the process!

They all did a fantastic job, with some students earning an "Employee of the Day" certificate for their exceptional efforts or performance.

Here is an example of the finished product that was created by 7y using batch production:

Well done to all, and we look forward to doing this with 7x on the next CED in March!

Year 7 CED - Life is a Beach

During a 'baking' hot CED week, Year 7 made and iced some fabulous 'Beach' theme cakes with Mrs Johnston. The excellently high standard of finished products speak for themselves ... superb!

Well done to all of those students taking part.