Cerys Webb

Over term 2 and 3, Year 7 has been working on a project to make a perfect society (‘utopia’). We started not knowing we were going to be making a project ‘utopia’ and then getting put into groups to create one. I was put in a group with Amelia and Sophie.

English The Giver

The Giver

In term 2 we read The Giver by Lois Lowry, which was about a boy who was in a perfect nation, this is where I learnt about the concept of ‘utopia’. The Giver showed me how life would be if everything was perfect, I saw that there were some awful things gone like climate change and pollution, but there were some downfalls like no individuality or no animals.

Science Sustainability

After reading The Giver in English we started looking at sustainability in science. we had to look at 30 ways to make a house sustainable and we made the house in groups. My group used these houses in our ‘utopia’, and we used our sustainable knowledge in different areas. For example, I used the vertical gardens from the house and put it by its self for food. Personally, I think that learning about sustainability was highly effective in my ‘utopia’. put a sustainable house here.

Hass Livability

The liveability factors

In Hass, we leant about the objective and submissive factors in livability. The five objective factors are climate, environmental quality, infrastructure, education and healthcare and safety and stability. In our utopia, we focused on infrastructure and environmental quality. Learning about the factors was effective in my utopia because we could focus on specific factors to make our city as livable as possible for everyone.

Innovated Global goals

Before we started making our models, we had to research the United Nations Global Goals. There are 17 global goals and we had to try to get accredited for the goals we wanted to focus on. My group got accredited for 6 global goals which were zero hunger (2), no poverty (1), good health and wellbeing (3), sustainable cities and communities (11) and life below water (14).

Innovated Creation

During InnovatED we started making our utopias, whether that was a physical model or on Cospaces. My group decided to do a physical model. There was a lot of ups and downs about making a physical model, for an example we had trouble with moving our utopia around but we didn’t have to worry about our work deleting. We had term 3 to make them and we presented them at the end of the term.

our finished utopia

English Creating speech

During English, we created a speech that we could use to talk about on the presentation night. After we created our speech, we presented it to the class. This was a good practice to use my information to different people. I used my information from the speech and used it to talk to others on the presentation night. This was a helpful way to remember my information for me because there was a lot going on in my ‘utopia’ and reflecting on what was in there assisted me to go into detail.

Civics and citizenship Constitution

Near the end of the term, we started to look at civics and citizenship to support us when we created the constitution. The constitution was filled with how the government runs, the rights of a citizen and many more concepts. I learnt heaps about the different types of governments and the rights we have. In my utopia, we decided to have a constitutional monarchy and democracy government with a lower and upper house and representatives for each suburb.  

Presentation Night

On the second last Friday, we presented our utopias to the school/parents. I believe that we used our public speaking skills to the best that we could. I spoke to around 9 parents or guests. It was nice to see everyone else’s accomplishments and their final model. My group put our model in the middle of the table, and we put our sustainable house on the side of it.

What I learnt about myself

I learnt that if I put my heart into a project, I can have fun and get a learning experience out of it at the same time.

Challenges

I found that the challenges were thinking of our main ideas that were different from other people’s utopia. My group did find ideas that were unique and helped our city grow more sustainable like trains instead of cars, a desalination plant and more.

What I enjoyed the most

I enjoyed the creating part of this project the most because I like to make things instead of writing things down. I was also with my friends which made things go faster because we were having fun.

What I would do differently

If I did this project again, I would change the way our city looked and made it less busy. I wouldn’t change my group because I think we worked well together, and we all had skills in different areas so we could cover more learning areas.

Conclusion

Overall, I put myself out of my comfort zone for this project. I am not comfortable talking to strangers, however in this project I needed to. The more I did it, the more comfortable I became with it. Project Utopia was refreshing and a fun way to work because we weren’t just writing all of our learning down in a Word document. I loved the multidimensional aspect of the project, with each part adding to the next. It was also great to do the project with my two friends.