"Heat it Up", Connected – Have You Checked?, level 2, January 2015
03 January 2015
This story follows Paige and Sabitra as they use a science experiment to investigate how to improve the design of their solar oven. After reading the story, students are invited to try the experiment themselves, and find out the result.
To move from science into a focus on technology, students could follow the analysis of their results with modifying the design of their own pizza oven and checking whether this improved its cooking efficiency.
- Trial a range of materials, for example, black plastic, paper, card, paint, tin foil, and aluminium plates. Manipulate materials to suit the pizza oven design. Manipulating materials refers to "working" existing materials in ways that do not change their properties (their composition and structure is not altered). Examples of manipulation are: cutting, molding, bending, jointing, gluing, and painting.
- Discuss with students the desired specifications of their solar oven and how the materials selected could align with these. How have other technologists manipulated materials to improve the efficiency of their pizza solar oven? Develop a brief for the pizza oven.
You can find a PDF version of this article here: Literacy Online, Connected.
Other useful resources
Indicators of progression for discussion starters
| Component | Indicators | Level |
| Technological products |
| 4 |
| Brief development |
| 4 |