Tune-in to Prepare for Your Visit to Cape Otway Lightstation
Now you have chosen the type of excursion experience you want and the themes/topics for your students to focus on it’s time to tune them in.
As experienced teachers, you are the experts on how to prepare your students for the visit to Cape Otway Lightstation. You will already be well-versed in thinking, brainstorming and questioning tools so we will just provide you with a bit of content to help your students prepare for their visit.
Working individually, in pairs or small groups, students undertake initial investigations to prepare for their visit with a web search. Depending on how you structure your class activities and what your theme/s, topics or big questions are we have taken a selection of short video clips and/or information to match on our website.
To help you navigate, we have matched the excursion topics/themes to the videos and web topics.
| Cape Otway Theme/Topic | Cape Otway “Explore” webpage topics/videos |
| Life in the 19th Century | Tales of The Cape |
| Communication at Cape Otway | Telegraph Station |
| Immigration and Shipwrecks | Tales of The Cape |
| Weather at Cape Otway | Bureau of Meteorology/South West/Cape Otway |
| Native Plant Talks | Indigenous Cultural History |
| World War 2 at The Cape | World War 2 Bunker |
| Lighthouses and Navigation | |
| Remote Living at The Cape | Tales of The Cape |
Ask each student to prepare one or two burning questions, or each pair or group to coordinate a set of questions to ask/investigate while they are on site.
Before their visit, students should also think about where/how they might find out their first-hand data and how they will record it. Eg. will they take photos, take notes, draw pictures, read signage or ask Guides?
Download the Cape Otway Lightstation Map and ask students to plot where they will find out about certain topics. Eg. Telegraph Station for information about communications or Radar Bunker for information about World War 2 or Whale Watching.
Students can bring their marked-up map with them along with their burning question/s.
