Other School News
Unit 3 Biology Excursion
to Ecolinc
Finally, the students of Year 12 Biology had the opportunity to put their theory into practice at the Ecolinc Lab in Bacchus Marsh! We have been learning about Genetically modified organisms and their role in food. We investigated by using polymerase chain reactions and gel electrophoresis scientific techniques to see if corn chips, potato chips, soy flour, polenta and rice crackers were genetically modified!
iCreate STEM and Coding Merge for Robogals Workshops
iCreate STEM and Coding had the privileged to have workshops run by volunteers from Melbourne University – Robogals. Both classes have had 2 workshops – Python and Arduino. Each workshop had challenges for students to complete such as coding traffic lights. A big thank you to the Robogals volunteers Risa Pais, Quianna Sison, Anke Oatley, Tabitha Ayudya and Audrey Lewis for running the Python and Arduino workshops!
Ms Luong
Learning Specialist: Numeracy & STEM
Sports News
A lot of sport has happened in the last month. From our Year 7 and 8 weekly sport to the beach volleyball and touch rugby comps. Starting off in March was the beach volleyball competition held on South Melbourne Beach, where we had many teams participate and where we had our Year 9 Fours Girls Team and our Year 9 Pair Girls Team come first out of many teams. We also had our weekly sport events for our Year 7s and 8s where they played volleyball, tennis and cricket where we also had some winning teams. Congratulations to the Year 7 Boys and Girls Volleyball Team and the Year 8 Boys Volleyball Team. Good Luck in the finals! We also had our Swimming District Competition where students, who won events in our Westall Swimming Carnival, competed against other schools at the Oakleigh Recreation Centre. Even though we were up against tough swimmers, we are still proud of those representing our school. Lastly, we had our Touch Rugby Competitions. With no practice at all, the teams still did amazingly well against some tough schools. Just like our swimmers, we are very proud of everybody who participated in Touch - we'll get them at Tackle! Thank you to all students who have participated in a sports event. We are keen to see what the future holds for Westall Secondary College.
By TJ
AFL Trainee
Scanning Electron Microscope 21-25th March 2022
During Week 8 (21-25th of March) of Term 1, we had the privilege to hire a scanning electron microscope (SEM) at Westall Secondary College. During their science lessons, all classes took turns to see SEM in action. They had the opportunity to observe the images of an SEM as our normal light microscope can only zoom x400, the SEM can zoom in up to x10,000! The image below shows one silk thread zoomed in; other students saw leaves, crystals or copper samples. A big thank you to our Science teachers and Ms Jennifer Phillips for their support.
Science Teachers - Ms Smrithi Buyya, Ms Amy Kerwick and Ms Loan Luong-Nguyen
Inter-School Debating Update
On Thursday 24th March, our Westall Debating Teams competed on the first round of the 2022 Competition.
The Year 11s and Year 10s went up against Huntingtower School and Glen Waverley Secondary College respectively, and I am so pleased to announce that the Year 10 Team came out victorious!
What’s more, Janeeta Nasim was awarded Best Speaker! Our Year 11s just missed out on a win this time, but are ready to take what they have learned and give South Oakleigh Secondary all they’ve got in Round 2!
Well done team!
Ms Anna Papagiannopoulos
English Coordinator
Department of Education News
FREE Holiday Camps for Eligible Students