Jennifer Selinger – Head of Science

Year 10

The National Health and Medical Research Council recently published a report banning clinics from allowing parents to choose the gender of a baby during the IVF process. It is always very nice when the outside world conspires to make our teaching immediately relevant, and this event coincided nicely with the beginning of the ‘Design a Baby?’ topic in Year 10. We begin by asking the students to consider the ethical aspects of this question, before launching into whether we actually can do some of these things, and if we can, how they are done. This is the basis for a topic on genetics where the students learn about the structure of our DNA, and the mechanics of inheritance. Scientists and the general public have to consider both whether we can do something and whether we should, and this topic introduces this dilemma to our students. Here are some initial ideas provided by Year 10 students, written before they had done any formal learning in this topic:

Dear Future Self

I feel that designing a baby has its pros and cons but I am against designing a baby. I think designing a baby is bad because the child isn’t born as its true self, it’s being born as what you want it to be, meaning that you want the child to have the personality you want it to have, the looks you want it to have and the brain you want it to have, but no children are like that. Making a child means letting it be born as the person it should be, with the looks and qualities it should have. I should love the baby for what it is and not what I want it to be.

Vicky Krielman

Dear Future Self

I think that I should design my baby because it would improve the child’s future. By making it not having any diseases and not being hideously disfigured, it would be greatly benefit its life because of the superficial world we live in. It’s not pretty, but in the society we live in, good looking people have a head start and I couldn’t think of intentionally not giving my child this start.

Leo Lipman

Year 9

Year 9 is also starting a new topic, kicking it off with a visit to ANSTO to find out as much as possible about the work they do there in the field of nuclear chemistry. The students found it “so cool” to actually see a nuclear reactor and they left the place with their heads filled with new ideas about radioactivity, atoms and chemistry and the importance these hold in their world. They have further developed their understanding of the structure of atoms and their enjoyment of chemistry by building and eating models of an atom using M&Ms – nothing like bribery to induce enjoyment.

Their previous topic featured highly in our most recent MakerSpace Focus Group meeting, where a group of teachers get together fortnightly to discuss and plan our fledgling MakerSpace and the new, purpose-designed space that will be part of the building going up where the Senior Library used to be. Group members were treated to a view of two lovely devices designed and built by members of Year 9 as the culminating task of the ‘Sparky’ topic. Students were given free range in developing a device or display – the only criterion was that it had to have one series and one parallel circuit in its design. The results included an impressive device which filled a glass with coca cola without needing someone to tip the bottle, a wildly spinning dancer and a variety of vehicles with moving parts and flashing lights. All the bells and whistles, literally!

Year 8

Year 8 is also finding learning sweet as they set off across the solar system clutching carefully chosen lollies that perfectly (or as closely as possible) model the planets. Their skills in measurement and scaling will be tested to the utmost as they pace out the correct distance between planets on the scale of the lollies and head off to Randwick in pursuit of a better understanding of the real size of our Solar System.

Life might not be quite like a box of chocolates, but in the Science department, it comes close!