Head of Middle Years

Welcome to our Week 8 Middle Years newsletter. With lockdown extended once again, it is an appropriate time to ensure that you touch base with your child and continue assisting them in maintaining a healthy routine, as they continue to navigate the balance between online learning, eating healthy, maintaining an appropriate amount of exercise, and moving away from the screen to connect with members of their family. 

We know that there are many positive benefits that regular exercise and movement has for the body and mind. These include, but are not limited to:

• general wellbeing
• mental alertness and health
• overall body strength and conditioning
• heart strength and health
• muscle strength

In fact, research shows that exercise releases chemicals like serotonin and endorphins that help to regulate and improve your mood – even if a person is already feeling good. So, when an opportunity presents itself, I would encourage you to help promote regular exercise for your child throughout the week. If you are stuck for ideas, there are many different short and extended home exercise classes/routines that can be found on the internet for all ages and abilities. 

MYP Learning

Approaches to Learning (ATL)

In our last newsletter, we elaborated the ATL of ‘Social Skills – Collaboration’. This fortnight, we will focus on ‘Self-Management' skills. 

When we refer to an individual’s ‘self-management’ skills, we can refer to a number of differing elements. Essentially, it refers to a person’s ability to manage their thinking, behaviours and emotions in varying circumstances. Whether it be organising themselves for study, to be on time at a training session or to know how to effectively respond to a situation when emotions are heightened, these all stem from an individual’s ability to self-manage themselves.

In MYP, self-management is focused on developing a student’s ability to:

• Manage their individual state of mind – management of their own emotions, persevering when things become challenging, practicing strategies to maintain a state of mindfulness, being resilient and learning how to stay self-motivated
• Organisational skills – Managing tasks and time effectively and appropriately
• Being reflective on their own practices and use of ATL skills – what worked, what didn’t, how did I grow in my understanding etc.

There is no doubt that each individual is on their own journey with the development of these skills, but needless to mention, self-management skills serve a very big purpose in the life of a person!

Source: ‘Approaches to teaching and learning (ATL) skills’ 

For further elaboration of communication skills, you can view the link below

https://isa.edu.gr/backend/vendor/ckeditor/plugins/fileman/Uploads/Inner%20pages%20documents/MYP/atl_skills_approaches_to_learnin.pdf

Pastoral Care

Camps

Camps are an integral part in the life of a student in the Middle Years. The benefits are enormous as students step outside their comfort zones and develop resiliency, learn to be more independent, develop collaborative skills and strengthen their bond amongst each other. Unfortunately, due to the current lockdown, the Year 9 Camp to Tandara – Halls Gap and the Year 7 Camp to The Summit will be postponed until Term 4.

Middle Years Learning

It is always exciting to share examples of student achievements. Recently, we had students compete in State and National educational competitions. These extra-curricular opportunities are additional ways for students to immerse themselves in areas of interest and extend their learning. Recent competitions include:

• Mathematical Association of Victoria (MAV) Year 8 Maths Games Day – Two teams of four competed in this tournament remotely. The teams ranked sixth in the day’s competition and were ranked in the top 10 in Victoria.

The following Year 8 students are to be congratulated for their wonderful achievement!

• Namra S
• Ehsaas W
• Rishabh M
• Pearl P
• Anika N
• Bhavya S
• Anushka D
• Meesha H

Year 7 Maths Games – Four of our Year 7 students participated in a virtual online Maths Game competition, where they were involved in a range of activities testing their understanding and application on concepts. Well done to the following students on a very successful day:

• Yashita U
• Rajpratap S
• Kevin H
• Isabelle A

Congratulations to Jerod T from Year 8 who achieved an Outstanding award in the Melbourne University Mathematics Competition. This competition was designed to test the ability to analyse six complex problems and to clearly and accurately express the individual’s application of problem solving skills and mathematical understanding. Well done, Jerod! A wonderful achievement!

Visual Arts:  Year 9 Photography Semester 2

At the start of his ‘Pencil versus Camera’ series, Belgian artist/photographer/musician Benjamin Heine first overlayed his own simplified pencil sketches on top the real settings from which they were drawn – then simply tore out his work and shoot pictures of it.  An easy enough process, but with surprisingly thought-provoking results.

It starts with a real photograph, then a simple, semi-realistic pencil drawing and then the magic happens....... the re-combination of the two is strangely compelling in a way that neither work could hope to be on its own – even the most generic still life or landscape setting comes alive in new ways through this surreal hybridisation, a creative whole out of two relatively conventional artistic media.

Here’s some of the students’ initial forays into the Ben Heine-inspired Pencil Vs. Camera genre:

YEAR 6 MUSIC – TRIMESTER 3

Currently, the Year 6 Music classes are studying the World Music Project unit.  Their major focus will be on the music of Japan.  On Tuesday, Ms Helmer’s class did a quick search up about instruments from around the globe, and here’s what a couple of them discovered:

Dunitha K

Zeal  P

1. This first instrument is called a Pipa which is a string instrument and is from China.

2.  This second instrument is a harp which is also a string instrument and is originated from Egypt. 

3.  This is an instrument which was originated from India and was invented in the 1800s.  This is called a sitar which is also a type of string instrument. 

4.  This is called a bass drum which was originated from Turkey. Its instrument family are drums and percussion.