Rural Skills
SKILLS FOR WORK
Rural Skills at Intermediate 1
Course Introduction & Delivery: The above course leads to a Skills for Work Award at Intermediate 1, and introduces students to various aspects of Rural Skills.
Barony College believe that students need to have a breadth of practical experience and a broad appreciation of the land based sectors and associated rural skills at this stage of their education. Barony College staff design the delivery of the Intermediate 1 course so that students will gain a better understanding of rural career opportunities and be able to make more informed future career choices thereafter.
This course can be offered by Barony College over one year, on a half day a week attendance basis with an additional two periods of study time at school. Alternatively, the course can be delivered over two years, with half a day attendance a week at Barony College.
Learning & Teaching Approach: Barony College uses the Barony College Learning Cycle. This style of lesson is used to clearly explain topics to students in all units. In this way students are introduced to materials and activities in advance of having to do them practically in real situations. This makes the course content more understandable, meaningful and supports the understanding and development of safe working practices. In the same way, understanding, meaning and safety is reinforced during the practical activities and also afterwards through the students demonstrating what they learned and their personal experience of the session.
Core Skills: Communication, Numeracy, ICT, Working With Others & Problem Solving feature, as appropriate, throughout the programme. Barony College builds these skills into every opportunity possible supporting continuing student improvement. Team work and pair work are very important to the course and planning and sharing of knowledge is encouraged. School students also have a log in to MOODLE - Barony College's intranet - and this allows mobile learning where students can access their e folders from any location including out-with the college
Assessment: Practical assessment is commonplace, using methods that the student can relate to and in ways that they can demonstrate their learning best. Check lists, quizzes, multiple choice, e-diaries, portfolio and student presentations are part of the course. Students also build up photo evidence of their work which can be attached to their e-folio.
Recording Personal Learning & Achievement Students record their learning in each lesson in a personalised Rural Skills learning diary. Students will be encouraged to record learning in an e-format in Barony College's Student Intranet which is called MOODLE from academic year 2009-10.
Tutorials: Students input through a regular tutorial system ensures that the students' comments are taken into account in terms of the course content, approach, methodology, preferred ways of learning and assessment. Since every lesson also offers an opportunity for discussion and reflection, this also allows for on-going student input.
Health & Safety: Risk assessments are studied for all practical activities in advance of students facing real life tasks and are reminded of them when undertaking subsequent repeated or similar tasks. Students are supervised during task and review the H&S practice in relation to the task afterwards. Students also produce their own risk assessments of selected tasks as reinforcement. Students are provided with a set of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) which is stored at Barony College.
Mandatory Units:
- Land Based Studies
- Employability
- Estate Maintenance
Land Based Studies: This unit gives students a wide range of practical exposure to different land based industries, as well as an understanding of land use.
Students will all engage in practical activities in
- Agriculture (Cattle calves, sheep),
- Animal Care (Pets),
- Equine (Horses),
- Fish Husbandry (Farmed fish, wild fish and ornamental fish)
They will also undertake practical activities in
- Forestry
- and Horticulture (Gardening)
The emphasis will be on Plant Establishment and Care. Students select preferred land based industries and research material for a group presentation of the land based industries researched. The planning of the presentation is recorded in each student's portfolio. The presentation itself could take the form of a Power Point presentation, a poster or a video. The planning and presentation is shared by the whole group.
Employability: This unit for example supports students in their study skills, behaviour, punctuality, courtesy and general good work habits. It also requires students to seriously understand and demonstrate Health & Safety practices around the college and in relation to specific tasks.
Estate Maintenance: This unit offers a broad range of practical estate skills relevant to all land based sectors. Students are introduced to dry stane-dyke repair, fencing, plumbing, painting, cement mixing and path repair.
Options: Animal OR Horticulture
Animal Option
Two units are offered:
- Animal Handling
- Animal Husbandry
Animal Handling
This is an introduction to Animal Handling and Animal Husbandry and assumes no or little prior experience. Animal Handling involves practical activities involving moving, restraining, haltering cattle and sheep. This can be within their pens or sheds or herding/ shepherding from enclosed areas/ buildings to other fields, sheds or into a crush or a race in order to work more effectively with an animal or group of animals.
Animal Husbandry
Students have opportunities to take part in activities which naturally occur on a farm. Since students have Barony Farm as one of their bases, they can experience a wide range of practical and classroom activities. These involve caring for the animals in a number of ways. This requires students to engage in cleaning, bedding, feeding and watering cattle and sheep and checking the herds or flocks for signs of health, stages of development and readiness for breeding. Students get involved with weighing calves, tagging them, assisting with recording details which will be entered into the animal's personal profile and ultimately its' passport.
Horticultural Option
Two Units are offered:
- Crop Production
- Soft landscaping
Crop Production
Students will assist preparing a site for a crop which could be one of the following: bedding plants or nursery trees. Students look after the crop through the phases and ensure that it grows well. While doing this, students learn about selecting appropriate plants for a given site and purpose, the growth process/ stages, growing requirements such as light, temperature and water, maintaining plant health and keeping disease/ pests at bay. Students also learn to work at a pace which is appropriate for industry and their personal individual learning styles.
Soft Landscaping
Students will assist with the preparation of a soft landscaped area - marking out, cultivating and improving the soil. A site for a project which could be one of the following: hedge planting (amenity or boundary or farm), tree planting (woodland or amenity), shrub planting, herbaceous planting displays, bedding plant displays. Students learn about laying out plants at correct spacing, preparing and planting them correctly, back filling the planting holes and firming the plant in and selection of fertilisers. They look after their soft landscaped area and ensure it grows well by pruning, dead heading and weed control practices such as mulching, hoeing, digging and hand weeding. Students select appropriate plants for the area, they assist with the planting and post-planting activities.
