Around the College

Year 8 & 7B Geography Fieldwork Excursion

On the first Monday of term 4, 9th October 2017, the Year 8 and 7B Geography classes travelled to Frankston and Mordialloc beach to investigate and compare two Melbourne beaches and inquire into the impacts the population has had on coastal landscapes. This involved collecting data through making observations, taking measurements and photographs, interviewing coast users, sketching maps and carrying out experiments. When we came back to school we completed a Geographical report on the two coastal areas.

Firstly, we went to Mordialloc beach and attempted a few observations from the fieldwork booklet.  It was extremely windy and difficult to carry out some of the observations. Most of the work was done at Frankston, such as the ‘Longshore Drift Experiment,’ where the students threw oranges into the ocean and counted how long they took to get back to shore to determine longshore drift.

There is now a lot more awareness in Year 7 and 8 about the coast, making everyone want to do more to help keep the beaches clean and safe. Most people, after going on the excursion, want to do more to make sure they never pollute or do anything to harm the beach.

Overall the coastal excursion was innovative and fun for students, it had great experiments and was at amazing locations.

Sofia Jorgovic, Aliya Gray and Penny McNeill 

Year 7B

Literacy Planet

As we get closer to the end of the year, it can become more challenging to find engaging methods of home study for Junior School students. One option might be Literacy Planet, which all students in Years 7 - 9 now have free access to until the end of 2017. Literacy Planet is an online program with thousands of interactive exercises aligned to the Australian Curriculum to help support what students are learning in the classroom. If students do not already know their user names and log in codes, they can find out from their English teacher. For more information you can visit their website at www.literacyplanet.com/au/.

Any feedback about the program from either students or parents and guardians would be appreciated.

Michael Kelty

Literacy Coordinator

Debating Achievements

Mikki Clemens, one of our Year 9 students who is a keen and committed debater recently won a Swannie Award. The Swannie Awards are awarded to the speaker in each region and grade who has the highest average speaker score after completing at least three debates during the year. The Schools competition this year involved more than 10,000 students from over 1,400 teams representing 268 schools in 4 grades across 19 regions. Mikki was one of only 92 people across all grades and states to be presented with a Swannie Award, which is a fantastic achievement! Well done Mikki!

Our junior debaters in the Junior Secondary Debating Program (Marcus Georgiou, Sam Sehee, Lauren Raftopoulos, Mint Inchomnan, and Jasmine Shaw) have also been doing very well, working hard and developing their debating skills, ready for the schools competition in 2018. They have won both debates so far against competing schools this season, and we are excited to see how they progress in years to come. 

Georgina Peters

Enhancement and Enrichment Coordinator