Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Standard 2
Standard 2
Standard 2
The 'Tour de Mawson Lakes Biathlon' is a spectacular event that brings together the physical domain
of cycling with the cognitive challenge of understanding health and sustainability. Success in this
challenge requires teams to work collaboratively to meet the thinking and action demands required
to complete the event. Dedicated riding and profound, deep thinking are essential!
The ‘Tour de Mawson Lakes Biathlon’ is an innovative learning unit that cohesively integrates multiple
dimensions from within the Australian Curriculum. Motivating the design of this unit is the desire to
create deeply engaging and contextually relevant learning experiences that provide opportunities to
encourage higher order thinking and the development of valuable life skills. The teaching session will
draw from the Australian Curriculum sections as follows; HPE (strands: Personal, Social and
Community Health and Movement and Physical Activity), Sustainability (Cross-Curriculum Priority),
Critical and Creative Thinking and ICT (General Capabilities). Movement and Physical Activity will be
covered by engaging in a group cycling event including a brief ‘licensing’ process (basic skills test).
Personal, Social and Community Health will involve students considering strategies for life long
physical and mental health and well-being for themselves personally and strategies encouraged within
the Mawson Lakes community: community initiatives, public spaces and design choices. The concept
of sustainability will be a persistent underpinning idea of the whole session with dedicated takes
around environmental and health sustainability to be undertaken at the ‘Tour Stages’. ICT will feature
as a safety tracking method (Strava) throughout the ride and be used to complete ‘Tour Stage’ tasks.
Critical and Creative Thinking will be developed through teacher questioning throughout the ride and
during ‘Tour Stage’ sustainability activities.
Facilitating the best possible outcomes from students will require all the previously mentioned
features to be seamlessly integrated, this is possible through understanding the value of each
individual component and the decisions made by the teacher on how to bring them together
effectively. Below is the ‘Bicycle Model’, an analogy for how each component (Australian Curriculum
element) serves an essential role in the functionality of the whole bicycle (unit of learning). Implicit
within this 'Bicycle Model' metaphor is the notion that the whole is more than the sum of the parts:
each element has a function but only by systematically linking them can the full potential and purpose
be reached.