Teachers should establish if students have developed robust level one understandings and are ready to begin working towards level two achievement objectives for technological knowledge and plan learning experiences to progress these as guided by the level two Indicators below.

Technological Modelling

Technological Products

Technological Systems

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand that functional models are used to explore, test, and evaluate design concepts for potential outcomes and that prototyping is used to test a technological outcome for fitness of purpose.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand that there is a relationship between a material used and its performance properties in a technological product.

Achievement Objective

Students will:

• Understand that there are relationships between the inputs, controlled transformations, and outputs occurring within simple technological systems.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological modelling at level 2, teachers could:

• guide students to understand that design concepts refers to design ideas for parts of an outcome, as well as the conceptual design for the outcome as a whole
• provide students with the opportunity to explore a variety of functional models and identify the specific design concept/s being tested
• guide students to discuss the sorts of things that could be explored and tested using functional modelling
• provide students with a range of prototyping examples and guide them to identify the specifications that were used to evaluate the prototype. Examples should include the modelling practices of technologists.
• provide students with the opportunity to discuss how specifications provide a way of measuring the fitness for purpose of the prototype.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological products at level 2, teachers could:

• guide students to understand that performance properties of materials refer to such things as thermal and electrical conductivity, water resistance, texture, flexibility, colour etc;
• provide students with the opportunity to research and experiment with a range of materials and guide them to describe how their performance properties relates to how they could be useful. For example, a material that was water and UV resistant, durable, and easily cleaned could be useful for outdoor furnishings;
• provide students with the opportunity to research and experiment with a range of materials and guide them to describe how particular materials can be manipulated;
• provide students with a variety of technological products to explore and encourage them to explore these through such things as: using, 'playing', dismantling and rebuilding as appropriate;
• guide student to describe the relationship between the materials selected and their performance properties. For example, a school lunch box is made of plastic because plastic can be moulded into different shapes, and is hard, durable, lightweight and easily cleaned.

Teacher Guidance

To support students to develop understanding of technological systems at level 2, teachers could:

• provide students with the opportunity to identify that simple technological systems are systems that have been designed to change inputs to outputs through a single transformation process;
• provide students with a range of simple technological systems and encourage them to explore these through such things as: using, 'playing', dismantling and rebuilding as appropriate;
• guide student to understand the role of each component and to identify the changes that are occurring in the transformation process;
• guide students to understand that sometimes transformation processes may be difficult to determine or understand and these can be represented as a 'black box'. That is, a black box is described as a way of depicting a part of a system where the inputs and outputs are known but the transformation process is not known.

Indicators

Students can:

• describe the sorts of things that functional modelling can be used for in technology
• identify the design concept being tested in particular functional models
• identify why prototyping is important in technology
• identify the specifications used to evaluate particular prototypes.

Indicators

Students can:

• describe the performance properties of a range of materials and use these to suggest things the materials could be used for;
• describe feasible ways of manipulating a range of materials;
• suggest why the materials used in particular technological products were selected.

Indicators

Students can:

• describe the change that has occurred to the input to produce the output in simple technological systems;
• identify the role each component has in allowing the inputs to be transformed into outputs within simple technological systems.