Another example of great collaboration and sharing among our Kaiako in the Kāhui Ako

Who stole the camp money? This is what the ākonga of St Mary’s, Ōtautahi were investigating in the last two weeks of Term tahi.

Bernie Davison created a forensics unit for Villa Maria College and when I saw how engaged our ākonga were, I thought it would be great if other schools got to experience this unit as well. Ākonga work through a range of Science practicals, gathering and interpreting data, making observations, and then presenting their findings as a forensics report.

One of Bernie’s focuses within the Catholic Kāhui is engagement. Therefore, she got some senior ākonga who are savvy with their laptops to film an impressive trailer, to play in the first lesson. They then interviewed four of our staff members, filming their responses. Bernie made crime scene evidence, such as hair samples; fibre samples; shoe prints, and fingerprints.

Practicals included chromatography with shoe polish and pens, handwriting analysis, and a glucose test for the drink left at the crime scene. For each of the above, evidence from our four staff members was made. Students were then able to use a range of science equipment and skills to compare the staff members’ evidence to the evidence found at the crime scene.

Chrystie Woods has been working with Jess Coad at St Mary’s, who was about to start teaching a unit on forensics. We chose a few of the practicals for her ākonga to do, such as, chromatography; fingerprints; drink analysis, and microscope work. Jess amended the crime scene context and made St Mary’s teachers the centre of the crime. Her ākonga were shocked that someone could have stolen their camp money and very eager to find out which one of their teachers it was. Throughout the two lessons, ākonga learned the Science behind chromatography; how to focus a microscope; the different types of fingerprints people can have; how to record their observations, and lastly how to determine what evidence is relevant, as some evidence may not be related to the crime. We thoroughly enjoyed connecting with St Mary’s and look forward to working with them and their lovely ākonga and staff in the future.