Year 5 Project-Based Learning

Task Checklist

As part of the Project-Based Learning

Task Submissions, teams must answer the
following questions in a one minute video.

Include the answers to these questions in

your script to be successful!

1. Who are you? Who is in the group?

[Names have been omitted for privacy]

2. What problem were you working on? Why did you choose
it? Who is impacted by this problem?

The main problem we were working on is how to best

prevent people from getting stranded on islands during
the floods. We chose it because we want to design a boat
that allows these stranded people to find their way out of
islands during floods and lower the impacts of flooding
on our local communities. Lots of people are impacted
by this problem like families with children just like us.

3. How did you go about solving/learning about this

problem? What did you think about during the process?

To learn about this problem, we conducted research into

news articles about flooding and its impacts on local
 communities. We also had to research what materials
best float to make sure our boat would be a highly
appropriate solution for stranded people during floods.
We had to think about how we could make the boat
accessible to the person but also how to design a boat
that is sustainable too.

4. What solution/s did you propose/design? What does it

do? How does it work? How might you test your solution?

The solution we proposed was to have a really sturdy

base for our boat. That way, it will still stay intact even
against the rough and raging waters. In our prototype,
we represented this by having two layers of paddle pop
sticks – one as the base and one as the reinforcers. We
also assembled them using both sticky tape and a hot
glue gun so it would be really secure and safe for our
passengers. One of our team members also said we
should add a lifesaver buoy in case anything goes wrong
so that was also good. We could test our solution by
leaving the boat on water for at least 1 minute. We could
also rock the tub the water and boat is in to copy the
rough raging waters in real floods.

5. What methods did you use? What research did you do?

We did lots of research by looking at news articles and

videos about floods. Lots of the news articles described
how it affected different people and also how it can even
lead to death.

6. What did you learn? What are your findings or

conclusions at the end of the project?
 We learnt about the characteristics of materials and how
that affects if someone floats or not. It was really
interesting seeing our solution float whereas some other
team’s boat didn’t because they used different materials.
In conclusion, it is important that we do lots of research
before designing products to solve problems because a
lot of work goes into making sure things turn out right.
Because we did lots of research into the effects of floods,
what happens during them, and different materials we
can use, our boat turned out really good.

7. What could you do next as a result of this project?

Although our boat didn’t sink, we could make lots of

improvements. After testing our boat, we learnt that we
need to have a barrier around the edges of the boat so
that the water doesn’t spill in so easily. We could also
make the boat not so close to the water so it wouldn’t flip
over so easily if it's windy.