Year 8 Coordinator

As the first semester of 2023 draws to a close, it is important to reflect on the highlights and achievements across our year 8 cohort. Without doubt my personal highlight was taking the year 8 students to Camp Toolangi, where I saw students tighten the bonds with their friends and push themselves to the limit of their bravery in activities including a high-ropes obstacle course, a giant flying fox, and canoeing in temperatures close to freezing. Congratulations to Daniel Fenech and Shayan Ahmad who both received the Camp Toolangi Best Camper award, “for demonstrating perseverance, teamwork, communication and a great community spirit throughout the camp program”.

On the topic of awards, this semester saw five students receive our Commitment Award, for showing outstanding commitment to their learning. These students were Noah Kid, Malak Abdallah, Maysa Abdallah, Omar Ahmed, and Evolet Claxton-Hendriksen. Three students also received our Respect Award, for consistently showing respect to their classmates and school staff. These students were Tauheed Alam, Liam Tuckett, and Shayan Ahmad. Congratulations also to the 8C homegroup, who won the much-desired prize of a class party funded by Mr. Lawless for receiving the most values cards across Term 2. Well done!

Our year 7 & 8 boys also won the interschool soccer tournament this week! They won every single game they played and conceded only one goal throughout the entire tournament. Special mention to Chaouki Kaddour, Karim Kaddour, Mohammed Kaddour, Hussein El Hazouri, and Mohamad Alameddine who were the players of the tournament!

Other highlights this semester include students visiting their primary school to coach soccer to year 6 students; Mustafa El Hazouri, Hussein El Hazouri, Chaouki Kaddour, and Karim Kaddour did an outstanding job representing our school and helping to strengthen our link with our local primary school community. Some year 8 students were also chosen by their science teachers to represent our school at the Future Thinkers program at the STEM Centre of Excellence (SCOE); Jonah Sargent, Muhammad Saif, John Nunez, Nick Dunstall, and Evolet Claxton-Hendriksen also did an outstanding job representing our school at SCOE. Year 8 students have also been on excursions to the Tradeblock Café at the Victorian College for the Deaf to order drinks in Auslan, and to the Merri Creek on a bike education excursion. We look forward to more exciting opportunities to head out on excursions and represent our school in Terms 3 & 4.

Finally, I have been personally impressed by the amount of learning growth I am seeing in year 8 classrooms as I reflect back from the beginning of the year to this halfway point. As I walk by our year 8 classrooms, I am seeing commitment, respect, continuous improvement, and academic excellence from a vast majority of our year 8 cohort. I am certain that this learning growth will be reflected in some of the results delivered in the semester 1 reports, and I am certain that this learning growth will continue across the remainder of the school year. Have a wonderful break!

Harry Lawless,

Year 8 coordinator.