Student Activities

Science Week

Last week was Science Week at St. Joseph’s College. Each day Science staff provided students with a challenging quiz question on SIMON. The team received many excellent answers and would like to congratulate Jack Chiswell and Lucia Rochford who provided the most scientifically correct responses.

On Wednesday morning Learning Mentor classes participated in a fast-paced game of trivia. The questions covered all disciplines of science and proved to be an interesting challenge for many. Kelly Pay’s LM were crowned the champions and earned themselves a hot chip lunch.

Students' creativity was put to the test in the Oak Centre during lunchtime on Thursday. Miss James, Mr Brady and Mr Cybula challenged students to build paper planes that could either travel the greatest distance or do the best trick. Three boys from Delany house were the winners: congratulations to James Barret, Connor Armstrong and Seth Robinson.

Mr Leslie would like to thank all those who got involved in Science Week 2019.

Year 8 : Love your leftovers

Last week  Year 8 Foods were very fortunate to have two guest speakers share their knowledge with them. Sheri Doyle from the Echuca Council spoke about the problem of food waste, the introduction of green bins and how the Council manages waste. 

Steve from Veolia explained waste management and the various ways that Veolia is making a difference in our local community. He explained the treatment plant at Patho and also the way that food is recycled and composted in Stanhope. 

We gained a lot of valuable information from this experience and appreciate both Sheri and Steve's time and effort in creating an engaging and informative presentation. 

Students then rose to the challenge and prepared delicious, creative and mouth-watering dishes using items that people typically waste in the kitchen.

Year 8 Geography Field Trip

On 22nd  August around 50 Year 8 Geography students and teachers headed off to Mathoura and Picnic Point. When you study Geography you go on field trips to learn about the different places and how people change and use these places. We learned about the Cadell Fault (in Mathoura), how this uplift changed the course of the Murray, and also how people change and use the river landscape.

The first activity was a 1km walk along the Gulpa Creek to meet Yorta Yorta National Park rangers, Auntie Greta and Auntie Hilda. They showed artifacts and shared some knowledge on bush tucker, fishing and history of the local Aboriginal people. Some of the artifacts were boomerangs, turtle shells and spear throwers. The second activity involved a 3km walk looking for different features along the way.

After the walk, we headed to the Reed Bird Hide. We met Keith Stockwell, a person who knows everything about birds. At the Bird Hide we had two activities to do. The first was to assess and record tree health and to work out how trees react when they do not have enough water. The second activity was to observe and record bird sightings and to sketch the wetland. 

After finishing at the Bird Hide, we drove to Picnic Point for lunch, which was sausages cooked by Trev. Thanks, Trev!

We had to complete a cross-section sketch of the river and we learned about weirs and the purpose of fish ladders. A fish ladder flushes fish upstream so that they can lay their eggs.

All up, we learned a lot about how earthquakes have created and changed our local landscape and how our actions change and stress the river landscape.

Everyone in Year 8 Geo Local would like to thank Mrs Phillips, Mr Phillips, Ms Anderson, Ms Bowles, Tanner, Ellen and Trevor for coming along with us on the day. A huge thanks to Kev for driving the bus too.

By Kaydn, Jed and Fernando

Murray River Culinary Challenge

The Murray River Culinary Challenge is a three-tiered competition.  At the school level, students compete individually to vie for a spot in the Regional Final.  The two top scoring students from each school are paired and compete as a team in the Regional Final, the top scoring team then progressing to the Grand Final.  Menus in each level of the competition become progressively more difficult and are designed for students to be able to demonstrate their skills learnt during their hospitality training.

The Challenge spans four regions and will involve 99 students attending 17 schools from Campaspe, Shepparton, Swan Hill and Wangaratta districts.

Students had been practicing the three skills based menu dishes in class with their trainers, Craig Danswan at Echuca College, Rick Smollenaars at TAFE and the Kyabram students at GO TAFE. The School level events were held over two weeks in June.

The four teams in this year’s Regional hail from Echuca College, Kyabram P-12 College, Rochester Secondary College and St. Joseph’s College.

The Regional menu of Tempura Prawns, Pork Tenderloin Roulade and Sticky Date Pudding is designed for students to show their newly acquired knife skills and basic methods of cookery.

Each team had 2.5 hours to present two serves of each of the three dishes.

The industry judges, Paul & Nikki Cohen, were looking for consistency, flavour and were certainly impressed with the creative presentation from the students. A big thank you to our industry judges who gave their time and expertise, to not just judge, but support and mentor the students through the competition.

The students that will go through to the Grand Final are Cloe O’Brien and Nathan Huismann from St. Joseph’s College, Echuca.

Congratulations and good luck for the Grand Final to be held at Galen Catholic College, Wangaratta on Monday 9th September 2019.

The coveted Murray River Culinary Challenge trophy, a piece of highly polished red gum sourced from the Koondrook forest, is residing with the reigning champions, Notre Dame College in Shepparton, and will be hotly contested.

Moama Bowling Club has been a long term sponsor of the Murray River Culinary Challenge in the Campaspe region and this year is again the major sponsor of the overall competition. Thank you to the Moama Bowling Club for their generosity and support.

Thank you to CCLEN for the article and photos.

Beacon : Pathways pledge

On Tuesday 27th August all Year 10 students participated in the Pathways Pledge ceremony here at St. Joseph’s College.  Students from St. Joseph's College, Moama Grammar, Echuca College, River City Christian College and Echuca Specialist School all participated.

Andrew Walker, ambassador for Echuca Moama, spoke to the students about his pathway into AFL and how hard he had to work to be a success.  He spoke about not giving up on your dream, but to make it happen you need to be both passionate and committed.  During the morning students were entertained with singing by Maddie Colville from St. Joseph’s College.  At the conclusion of the official part of the ceremony all students then signed their schools pledge board, making a commitment to their future either in the workforce or tertiary education.

Well done to all the Beacon Leaders who were the hosts of the event.

The next event on the Beacon Calendar is the Year 9 Mock Interviews which will take place on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th September.