Sustainable Housing
Overview
Sustainable Housing is a STEM education program is designed to engage students in learning about heat transfers by convection, conduction and radiation and the thermal properties of matter. It uses the context of designing a low energy home to explore these concepts. The inquiry-based and hands-on learning program engages and challenges both students and teachers. Career profiles encourage students to understand the use and influence of science.
The Sustainable Housing resource includes class sets of purpose-designed and built equipment as well as curriculum materials available in soft copy.
The resource maps to the Australian Curriculum Science, primarily at Year 9, but can be modified for use in years 7 – 10 and upper secondary depth studies.
STELR Sustainable Housing Curriculum Materials
The activities included in the STELR Sustainable Housing students book allow students to build a model low energy house and:
- learn about the particle model of matter
- investigate the three states of matter
- investigate how heat is transferred by convection, conduction and radiation
- investigate different materials used in housing (windows, insulation, roofing)
- learn about wave models and energy transfer in the form of sound and light
- investigate careers and study pathways in the housing industry.
The STELR Sustainable Housing program is a 6-8 week course however; it can be modified to suit the needs of your students.
STELR Sustainable Housing Books
The STELR Sustainable Housing teacher and student books are available in soft copy. The student books are designed to be kept by students who write in them as they complete the unit.
They are supplied on the STELR Sustainable Housing USB or can be downloaded here:
STELR Sustainable Housing Teacher Resource 2nd edition – PDF (10mb)
STELR Sustainable Housing Student Book 2nd edition – PDF (7mb)
STELR Sustainable Housing collecting and retrieving data – PDF (878kb)
STELR Sustainable Housing Placement Template PDF (60kb)
STELR Sustainable Housing Investigation Sheet (300kb)
STELR Sustainable Housing Fact File
This unit is not supported by hard copy books.
STELR Sustainable Housing USB
A USB is available for purchase ($10). It includes digital copies of the student booklet and teacher guide in both word and pdf formats. A number of PowerPoint presentations and other useful resources are included including the STELR DVD – Global Warming – Cold facts – Hot science.
STELR Sustainable Housing Equipment Kits
The STELR Sustainable Housing Equipment kits include all the equipment required for students to undertake investigations into the best way to design a house that is the most energy efficient for a particular location.
STELR equipment encourages both guided and open-ended research. It has been designed and developed in Australia specifically for STELR and is robust, simple and easy to use.
How to purchase STELR resources
To purchase a class set of STELR Sustainable Housing equipment and curriculum resources, complete the order form below and send it, along with a school purchase order, to STELR.admin@atse.org.au
Individual Sustainable Housing teacher and student kits can also be purchased using the form.
Spare Parts
Spare parts, including additional measuring devices can be purchased from us. Please contact us if you need any spare parts or support at:
STELR.Admin@stelr.or.au
When ordering extra equipment items please quote the part number listed here.
How to use STELR Sustainable Housing Equipment
Sustainable Housing Equipment
There are several videos showing features of the STELR Sustainable Housing Kit.
An overview video that unpacks the Sustainable Housing Teacher and Student kits.
A video showing how to put panels into the Sustainable Housing cube.
A video showing the features of the data logger that is provided with the STELR Sustainable Housing equipment.
A video exploring inquiry ideas using the STELR Sustainable Housing kit.
How to collect and retrieve data from the temperature logger
This pdf document gives step-by-step information on how to load the logger program onto your computer and then retrieve the temperature data as a Excel spreadsheet
