Senior School Highlights
Kilvington Writer's Festival
Philip Thiel, Academic Dean of English
In 2021, for the second consecutive year, Kilvington Writers Festival took place remotely. This annual celebration of writing across the School featured daily reading and writing activities, guest speaker presentations and a book-themed trivia competition organised by English Captains Lolly Seligmann and David Overton.
The theme of this year’s Festival was Hope, inspired by Poem 314 of American poet Emily Dickinson, which presents hope as a loving bird that dwells inside each of us: ‘Hope is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul …’
At Thursday afternoon’s KWF Writing Competition Awards event, guest speaker Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen spoke about her own love of Dickinson’s poetry and her experience as a writer living under the challenging conditions of lockdown.
She also expressed thanks and admiration for the student writing that was shared by the English Captains. Winners and runners-up were announced in year levels, with a special prize for EAL students across the Senior School. See below for the full list.
On Friday, students in Years 10 and 11 enjoyed special guest presentations from local writers Danielle Binks and Harry Saddler. Harry had already expressed his pleasure at being able to speak with our students, albeit remotely, after his session at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival was cancelled due to COVID restrictions.
Thanks to the English Captains, English teachers and all who participated in Kilvington Writers Festival activities this year. May the event continue to spark hope in all of us!
KWF WRITING COMPETITION WINNERS:
Year 7
Diya James
Simon Huang
Year 8
Ruby Moore
Elijah Slavinskis
Year 9
Adele Takle
Josh Tighe
Year 10
Emily Chan
Hugo Della Bosca
Amber Johnston
EAL
Tina Qi
Rita Ma
Visual arts week
Last week was Visual Arts Week, so we asked our VCE Visual Communication Design and Studio Arts students to show us a glimpse of their work.
We're very impressed!
Debating news
Iva Roncevic, Debating Coordinator
This year's DAV debating competition started onsite with great enthusiasm with the excitement of debaters again filling the hallways of Kilvington. Unfortunately, lockdowns set in again and debates had to be moved online.
However, this did not deter our debaters, with both the D grade and VCE teams progressing through to the playoff rounds to compete for the finals. The D Grade team played their first playoff online on 19 August but were unable to progress through to the next round, missing out by the smallest of margins.
This experience was invaluable to them though, and their work will continue to pay off as they continue to debate in the coming years.
Our VCE team was more successful, beating John Monash Science School and progressing through to the Octofinals in early September.
A great achievement all around by all of the debaters who represented the School this year. They should all be proud of their work. I would also like to thank Mrs Anna McKenzie, Ms Cora Alvarez and Mr Philip Thiel for their work in helping the students prepare for their debates and supporting them throughout the year.
Kilvington's new creative writing club
Tamara Drazic, Library Service and Digital Resourcing
Assistant
This term, a group of talented Senior School students have banded together to form a new creative writing club. We meet each Friday at
lunchtime (virtually, for now) to discuss an element of writing craft.
In our first online session, students introduced the group to their current work-in-progress, thereby giving us some insight into their characters, story world and writing style.
Over the next two terms, we’re going to cover various writing-related topics including tone, atmosphere, characterisation, negative space, filter words, psychology of dialogue and story structure. The club gives students a space to experiment with their style, talk about their work, and get regular feedback from both me and their peers.
Going into this project, I wasn’t sure how we would go with getting members to join, given the news of lockdown extension after extension. Despite this, our first online session was a great success, and I hope the club continues to gain traction in the coming weeks.
In a time when schoolwork and the state of the world can be overwhelming, having the space to let your imagination roam free seems more important than ever.
Perhaps most importantly, the writing club connects like-minded students across senior year levels and encourages them to share and learn from each other. I hope this community we are building continues to support these students in their writing pursuits long after they leave Kilvington.
The creative writing club is open to any student in Years 7 to 12. If anyone is interested in joining, they can email me at drazict@kilvington.vic.edu.au.
Year 11 French results for the Berthe Mouchette Alliance Française Oral competition
Lucie Dickens, Academic Dean of Languages
Some of our Year 11 French students competed in this event at the start of Term 3. Due to the lockdown restrictions, students had to speak online to an assessor in French for four minutes about general conversation and then five minutes on a topic of discussion of their choice.
It is my pleasure to announce that six of our Kilvington students performed extremely well, with results ranging in the high 80% and low 90%.
Congratulations to Grace Kiosoglous, Kevin Nguyen, Sarah Yeo, Pia O’Reilly, Lolly Seligmann and Charlotte Westaway.
Melbourne International Film Festival virtual excursion
Lucie Dickens, Academic Dean of Languages
Despite the lockdown restrictions, Languages teachers have organised a virtual excursion to the Melbourne International Film Festival to see a movie in their French and Japanese classes before the end of Term 3 for all Years 7 to 12 students.
The movie for Japanese is called It’s a summer film and the French movie is The Fantastic Journey of Margot & Marguerite.
For any international movie lovers in our Kilvington Community, we highly recommend renting a movie online on the MIFF website - a way of travelling from the comfort of your home!