Welcome to Week 8!

We've almost made it through NAPLAN, and we're well into term 1. Thank you to our Year 7 and 9 students for their great work completing NAPLAN so far. Your effort and dedication are commendable.

Attendance

A reminder about student absences, if your child has been away for any reason, please contact the teacher to follow up. We're committed to staying informed about your child's progress and offering support where needed.

Late in the term can be when fatigue sets in and getting to school can become more difficult. If you are facing any challenges around attending school and need additional support, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your program leaders.

Parent/Teacher Interviews

We will be holding PT Interviews in the last week of this term. Details for this are:

• Thursday 3 April - interviews for all programs – NO CLASS on this day

Staff will reach out to families to make bookings, but we encourage you to contact them directly if needed.

As we move towards the school holidays, we ask that you look after yourself, your children and reach out for any support you need. While schools are closed and the supportthey offer is unavailable, Horsham has a range of services to assist you through many situations. Please take the time to reach out to them if needed.

McKenzie Creek

For the second consecutive year, students from the McKenzie Creek campus were able to enjoy a day out at Longerenongfor the 61st Wimmera Machinery Field Days.

This year was a special year as it was officially branded as the ‘Year of the Big Tractors’, students had the opportunity of sitting in a number of massive farm machinery from tractors,to headers & sprayers.

The Creek staff were very proud of how students had conducted themselves on the day by consistently using their manners, following instructions and wearing the college uniform with pride. It was particularly pleasing to see our young people interacting with stall holders and taking a genuine interest in the work that they did (you never know these people could be a future employer!)

Many highlights from the day included sitting in the Royal Flying Doctors flight simulator, playing laser tag, getting up-close to reptiles and seeing so much interesting farm machinery! Unfortunately, Ben didn’t get to see Chase & Marshall from Paw Patrol, maybe next year!

NAPLAN 2025

Well done to the students in both the McKenzie Creek and Blue Group programs for completing their 2025 NAPLAN testing. Whilst this can be a particularly stressful time for our students, the testing does provide important data to inform teachers of both the progress of students and the school, whilst comparing against the rest of the nation.

Blue Group - Swimming Program

Students in Blue Group will have their second swimming lesson scheduled for this Thursday 20 March as well as Thursday 27 March.

A reminder to please bring your bathers, change of clothes and a towel.

Upcoming Key Dates

● Monday 24 March - NAPLAN finishes

● Thursday 3 April - Alternate Programs Parent Teacher Interviews

VPC Senior Group 1

An extremely busy term 1 has seen the following great outcomes by students;

A total of 8 VPC units completed
Pat tests and career portfolios completed
Some work experience placements being carried out in various workplaces.

Given the busy nature of the term it has been great to most old and new students settling into a routine. Many more of our students are working part time jobs now. It is great to see this work ethic applied both in and out of school.

VPC Senior Group 2

Victorian Pathways Certificate students Seth Hicks and Logan Gooch are volunteering for the Horsham College Chaplaincy Committee. Each week Logan and Seth spend time loading donated books, shifting and then storing them for the Chaplaincy Committee’s Book Fair. Weekly hundreds of books are kindly donated and dropped off at the Alternative Programs building. It is a huge job and during their classes the boys cheerfully move the books. Some weeks they have to do it twice. The boys’ volunteer work contributes to their completion of some outcomes in the Personal Development Skills unit. Students are required to organise and participate in activities and group work. Well done Seth and Logan.

Orange Group

Orange group over the last few weeks have been cooking on a Thursday afternoon. This week we ventured outside and cooked on the Trangias. 10 students cooked pasta, where they had to prepare the onions, carrots and capsicums, whilst the pasta was cooking. They then made their sauce once the pasta was cooked. By the end of the session, everyone had cooked a wonderful pasta dish.