Junior School Highlights
Year 7 Highlights
The Year 7 cohort have once again been highly active over the last month, showing great motivation in their studies and extra curricula activities.
The Athletics Carnival showcased the Year 7's enthusiasm to give everything a go. The weather couldn’t have been any more perfect as students competed in a range of competitions including high jump, long jump, triple jump, shot put, running relays and more!
Camp has now been confirmed for the end of term 3 in the week beginning 16th of September. It can’t come soon enough!
Daniel Lake and Sue Rio
Year 7 Coordinators
Year 7 Students Learn Strategic Thinking with Professor Buckingham
What do you do when something totally unexpected comes along? Panic? Run around screaming? Hold your head in your hands and sigh? As human beings, we are programmed to do all these things that help us manage stress, and much more.
But, what if we could turn these moments of complete and utter panic into something more productive to help us work through any dilemmas that come our way. Well, on the 4th April, Year 7B learnt about strategic thinking and how to handle the situations of panic using a Black Swan Matrix.
Firstly, we learnt about the four by four thinking matrix that explores the known and unknown of what you do and think that was presented by Professor Buckingham from Monash University. We are programmed to learn routines such as tying up our shoelaces, but when we are not always sure, we turn to assumptions.
Assumptions tell us what we have accepted to think about and trust that they will happen. For instance, the teachers assume that on the students' day off, they do homework (little do they know…). After relying on your assumptions for a period of time, your assumptions become routines.
However, when that doesn’t work, you use Strategic Thinking. Strategic Thinking is about analysing what you have in order to make a situation work, and fixing what is stopping the situation from working in the first place. This is an opportunity to handle anything quickly and effectively, before moving onto the final step: innovative thinking. The matrix is called a Black Swan Matrix as it is a framework to develop innovative thinking to resolve events that could never be imagined, like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In this situation, you have to react faster than you have time to think, and in those few seconds, a quick decision can become life-threatening and therefore we must be prepared to think beyond the obvious to solve problems that arise.
Professor Buckingham guided us through an activity called Mentally Exhaustive Comprehensively Exclusive (MECE) to solve a practical problem. It was a great way to think about solving future problems that we don’t even realise could happen.
So, in the future, if 7B are ever confronted by any problems, we know what to do. Thanks Mr Buckingham!
Eve Gascoigne
Year 7B
Year 9 Highlights
A very busy term for Year 9! Students are currently preparing for the Model United Nations Conference where they will be asked to deliver a Preamble and an Operative. This is a great opportunity for students to support fellow delegates by collaborating, debating, and to use their negotiation and diplomacy skills.
This term Year 9 was visited by former Victorian Police Officer and current author, Susan McLean, to address issues surrounding cyber safety and strategies to use the internet in a safe, smart and responsible way.
Last but not least, well done to all Year 9 students who took part on our school athletics day - your enthusiasm and school spirit, made the whole day thoroughly enjoyable. Well done also for your sportsmanship at the inter-school sports.
Brenton Hale
Year 9 Coordinator
Preparation of a War Memorial in Year 9 History
Students from Year 9D took time to study the Gallipoli exhibition in the Library to garner ideas for their Memorial Project. Students are required to develop an artefact or memorial to commemorate different aspects of WW1. After Ms Michael visited our classroom to show students five different databased for background research via the Library Quick Links, students visited the Library to take notes and raise questions around representations of the Great War. Gaining insight into how artefacts are presented allowed students to develop inquiry questions to begin their own research and presentation. Year 9D appreciate Mr Tserkezidis, Ms Gatt and Ms Michael’s generosity in sharing their personal ANZAC paraphernalia for students to experience.
Deborah Cordingley
English/Humanities Teacher
