Around the College
Endeavour’s Readers and Writers Week
Week 8 of Term 3 was Endeavour’s Readers and Writers Week. Instead of joining the Nations’ Book Week, as in previous years, we decided to go our own way in 2020. The whole week was booked out with literary activities and was a real page-turner! The celebrations of words, books, stories, and language were launched on the Monday with the GREAT / small debate on the Mall Stage. Though the battle was fierce, the mighty student team, Ryan Tang, Jemma Weiss, and Joel Davidson were punstoppable. With pugilistic verbosity they outwitted the staff team and convinced everybody that size, indeed, does matter.
On Tuesday 8 September our entire Year 8 cohort had the great privilege to meet and workshop with Manal Younus, South Australian based author, speaker and poet. Manal was shortlisted for Young Australian of the Year in 2016 and has performed her stunning spoken word poetry around Australia and internationally. Our students were moved and inspired by her performance, and in workshops had a go at composing their own poetry. Manal again performed at Endeavour College on Friday of the same week, this time for our Year 11 students. The older students were equally taken by her mesmerising spoken poetry and agreed afterwards that her stories were “epic”. Wednesday was Dress-up Day and both students and staff came dressed up as their favourite character. A gallery of fictional celebrities graced us on the day; the libearians were there, and so was Harry Potter, Ciri from The Witcher, and Katnis Everdeen from The Hunger Games. Even the entire cast from The Great Gatsby were among the plethora of characters celebrating the Roaring 20s.
Throughout the day there were reports of glimpses in the crowd of Wallies and Wendies but we couldn’t find the Principal or Deputy Principal anywhere, nor any other members of the College Management Team. Thor was sighted photocopying some Geography worksheets... On Thursday 10 September, the fabulous Jack Heath (bestselling author of more than 25 acclaimed fiction titles for middle-years students and young adult readers) zoomed in from Canberra (COVID-style) for a full day of activities with all Year 9 English students. The week also signalled the end of the Premier’s Reading Challenge for 2020. This year was our most successful yet with 233 students completing the Challenge, our most successful year level was Year 7 with 114 student completions. Across the week, all students had the opportunity to vote for Endeavour’s favourite book. There was an organised regime of shortlisting until the final winner was decided, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Hunger Games came a close second followed by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The week was an epic success. The planning of a sequel is on the editor’s desk and will be released in 2021.
Annicka Adolphi
English Learning Leader
Catherine Barnes
Teacher Librarian
Tournament of Minds
On Sunday 13 September, three enthusiastic yet nervous Endeavour teams entered the Tournament of Mind competition. This annual event offers each team the opportunity to solve authentic, open ended challenges that foster creative, divergent thinking whilst developing collaborative, enterprise and teamwork. Due to Covid-19 restrictions the challenges were submitted online and judging was done externally at Flinders University.
Teams were able to choose from four disciplines for the Long Term Challenge and were given six weeks to plan, research and implement a 5 minute video submission with limited assistance from teachers, parents or peers. Students were encouraged to explore possibilities and experiment with ideas in order to produce their best possible solution. The student’s final performance required them to communicate their solution to a panel of judges in a creative and original way.
Most impressively, Team 3 received a Merit, which put them in the top 5% of the state! I encourage parents and extended members of the community to congratulate the teams who worked incredibly hard to receive the results they achieved.
Catherine Noack
Enrichment Leader
Tournament of Minds - Student Reflections
2020 saw the second year of Endeavour College participating in the Tournament of Minds competition.
The challenge statement this year was that “a group of mysterious people find a mysterious object in a mysterious place”. This lead us to create ideas and solutions ranging from, child exploitation in a mine, a wormhole leading to a new world and a mysterious asteroid that absorbs Carbon Dioxide. The chosen genre of all three teams this year was ‘social sciences’. We worked hard over the course of weeks and this year (due to COVID-19), we filmed our entries instead of performing them live, at Flinders University.
We have recently received news that Team 3, (my team) was in the top 5% of the state and should go to nationals this year, if they are online.
It was a great experience and we look forward to next year’s Tournament of Minds.
Bogdan Novakovic
Year 8 Student
Again in 2020, Tournament of Minds took place where students are presented with a challenge based around problem solving and critical thinking. Only, this year this was quite different. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Tournament was changed this year. Other years there were multiple disciplines (the arts, STEM, social sciences and language literature) with different challenges, but this year there was one challenge that had to be interpreted in different ways. It was based around an extraordinary discovery that a group of random people found.
As teams we had to come up with a solution to this extraordinary discovery in a way that reflected our chosen discipline. All three teams had different and unrelatable ideas that were discovery of a wormhole, a response to child exploitation and an element that will absorb excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. All teams had a lot of fun using thinking and problem solving skills to come to an answer over 6 weeks. It was a great and will always be a great experience.
Jack Wake-Dyster
Year 8 Student
Year 9 Band Connected Schools Tour
On Friday 11 September and Wednesday the 23 September the Year 9 Band visited Good Shepherd Lutheran Primary School and St Paul’s Lutheran Primary School to perform some of the pieces that we have learnt in our band this year. We started the concert with ‘My Favourite Things’ from The Sound of Music, followed by the Simpsons Theme, a medley from Seussical the Musical, the Mission Impossible and Pirates of the Caribbean theme songs and a ‘50s Rockabilly piece called Zoot Suit Riot.
Between performing our pieces, we demonstrated the different instruments in the band and asked many questions to the children. They asked questions of us as well and it was quite enjoyable to hear all the amazing questions and answers they had for us. We even got asked to play another one of our pieces again so they could dance on the way out at the end of the performance. We hope that the children at Good Shepherd and St Paul enjoyed listening to us play and are inspired to try to learn an instrument at their school or in the future.
Lacey Hitchenor
Year 9 Student
Endeavour College joins with Connected Schools – Virtual Reality Experience Day
As part of the College Enrichment Program, students joined with liked minded students from the Connected Schools for a day of virtual reality world experiences, construction and learning. Here is one reflection on the day.
A group of five students from Years 7 and 8, including myself, were able to go on an excursion to Lumination in Kent Town for a fun, VR based day of learning around environmental sustainability. In teams and separately, we were able to use software such as CoSpaces to create a VR world that was a game or story on our chosen topic within the field of environmental sustainability. I chose to look at the chemistry of ocean acidification and its effects on the environment. In the end, I made a story in VR that lets readers know about what issues ocean acidification presents to our earth. We were also able to take the opportunity to enjoy immersive VR (IMVR) in a short, fun game. We had the choice to create whatever we wanted in Masterpiece VR, journey into the Amazon rainforest or swim with sharks. It was a really fun experience that I feel lucky to have been a part of.
Jack Wake-Dyster
Year 8 Student