ARC :: Additional Information

Years 9-10
Agricultural Technology
Activities
Vegetable Production Enterprise - Soil pH Testing
Additional Information

Additional Information

View the Recording Templates for this Activity (Microsoft Word, 64 KB)

Guidelines for marking

The following guidelines for marking show one approach to assigning a value to a student's work. Other approaches may be used that better suit the reporting process of the school. Categories, marks, grades, visual representations or individual comments/notations may all be useful.

Range	A student in this range:
11-15 (High)	demonstrates a high level of proficiency and skill when undertaking practical processes and techniques consistently collects accurate information and evaluates it to draw correct conclusions demonstrates a clear ability to work as part of a team which works independently from the teacher independently follows all OHS procedures and performs the Activity without any risk to themselves or other students.
6-10 (Satisfactory)	demonstrates the skills needed for undertaking practical processes and techniques collects results without teacher direction and generally draws correct conclusions cooperates as part of a team which may need guidance by the teacher follows all OHS procedures after direction by the teacher and performs the Activity without any risk to themselves or other students.
1-5 (Progressing)	demonstrates some knowledge of the skills needed for undertaking practical processes and techniques requires assistance to perform the Activity, collect and use results sometimes cooperates as part of a team requires supervision when using equipment and in following the OHS procedures.

Feedback

Oral feedback will be given to the students during the Activity on such things as:

correcting any problems in the experimental process early in order to obtain accurate results
reinforcing safe work practices.

At the conclusion of the Activity, the teacher will provide written feedback on such things as:

practical skills, safe work practices and teamwork
accuracy of conclusions drawn from experimental results.

Future directions

Students will continue to undertake study relating to the production of a vegetable crop, with the main purpose of successfully producing at least one product.

Further suggested areas of study relating to this Activity include the use of the data logger and pH probe to determine the pH of the soil water. From this the results can be graphed for a number of sites across the Agricultural Farm.

Students would use pH results to investigate if problems exist and develop possible solutions. This would link to the additional content of Core B where students learn about the effect of soil conditioners, eg lime. They could then design and undertake an experiment examining the effect of lime on soil pH.