Year 8 News

Hey everyone, as always there is a lot happening with our Year 8’s and the term has been jam packed with lots of excursions and opportunities for our students. I’m excited to get to share some of these things with our community. 

The students have charged through the term and we are seeing lots of positive learning happening across the year level. We are seeing a lot of KPA’s (Kurnai Positive Acknowledgements). These green Compass reports acknowledge the positive learning behaviours that our students have shown, which I share each week at our student assembly.Please continue to support us in acknowledging your child’s great work by speaking to them about these KPA’s at home. Our Year 8’s have also been working diligently on their CAT’s (Common Assessment Tasks) and I'm looking forward to them being able to celebrate their learning from across the term at the conclusion of these CAT’s. On top of the CAT’s, our students have been doing amazing work in their classes and I will share their feedback in this newsletter.

LBU reward lunch

We once again celebrated those students who have demonstrated excellent learning behaviours across all of their classes. These students who have achieved an LBU average of 3.5 or above were celebrate at our year 8 assembly. They also received a certificate for their accomplishment and rewarded with a hot chip lunch. The hot chip lunch was enjoyed very much, especially given the cold and rainy weather we had on the day.

Year 8 Cooking Classes

Year 8’s are thriving in their cooking classes this term and students are absolutely loving it. The atmosphere is electric. With mouthwatering aromas, great conversation and music, the atmosphere is fantastic. 

Students execute recipes that are scaffolded in difficulty and in most cases, produce commercial standard products. Lately, recipes have included apple pies, quiche, dainties and much more. Homemade pizzas were a great hit, with students making their own pizza dough. 

Students are improving their skills in problem solving, measuring, communicating, teamwork, commitment to quality, multi-tasking, creativity, decision-making and much more.

 - Mr. Flake

Year 8 student feedback

We regularly look for opportunities to engage our students in providing feedback on what is going well at school and what they think could improve our school. Our students have recently been completing the AToSS (Attitude to School Survey) to help us identify the things that we do well at Kurnai. They have also been involved in focus groups with external agencies to allow them to give authentic feedback, without the pressure of speaking about the school to a member of staff. We are always looking for ways to engage students, as everything we do at our school is with the aim to improve things for them.

We asked some of our students what they have enjoyed about the term. Below are a couple of examples of the things they spoke about, which happen at our school outside the classroom.

"I look forward to P.E and activities like football. The year 7 and 8 girls participated in school football, although we didn’t win, we were motivated by McDonalds and worked really well together as a team. All the girls tried their best. We also had soccer, cross country, badminton and netball this term."

"Just Dance is really fun. This is a lunchtime activity on a Friday. It is an enjoyable way to interact with people and make friends. There is also a chess lunchtime club being organised this term in the library. Having things to do at lunchtime makes the week enjoyable and gives us something to do with our friends. We like getting to dance to our favourite just dance routines too."

We encourage feedback and ideas to make improvements for our students. If you are having conversations at home about things which could make school a better place, we encourage you to share these ideas with us or support your child to share these ideas with us when they are at school. All of the great things that happen in the world started off as a small idea at first and we look forward to continue striving to make this school an amazing place to be.

Planetarium experience

Coinciding with reconciliation week, our Year 8 students got to experience “The Earth Above: A Deep Time View of Australia’s Epic History”. GLAWAC (Gunaikurnai Land and Waters Aboriginal Corporation) came to the school and conducted a short workshop with our students before showing a presentation via their portable planetarium. Below is a short description of the presentation:

The Earth Above: A Deep Time View of Australia’s Epic History is a feature-length full-dome planetarium show from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) produced by the Deakin MotionLab in collaboration with First Nations communities and UOW Science Space. 

The show explores Australia’s past 140,000 years, incorporating traditional and scientific knowledge to tell Australia’s epic story and transport viewers to four locations: Girraween Lagoon on Larrakia and Wulna Country outside Darwin in the NT; Cloggs Cave on GunaiKurnai Country in Victoria’s East Gippsland region; Lake Mungo in NSW on the land of the Barkandji/Paakantyi, Ngyiampaa and Mutthi Mutthi people; and Jiigurru (Lizard Island) on the Great Barrier Reef, which is sacred to many, including the Dingaal community.

The immersive educational experience will be shown extensively nationally and internationally through existing planetariums and with a portable inflatable planetarium-style dome.

This unique experience allowed our students to experience these epic stories in a new way, with the planetarium providing a calm and relaxing environment.

Art

The year 8's have been working on a collection of products and an advertisement poster the entire term so far around the theme of symbols of life and death. They have designed and painted a skateboard deck, a hat and a t-shirt. 

Concerns or queries

If you have any concerns or queries about any of the items mentioned above, Year 8 student matters, or just general inquiries, please do not hesitate to give the year 8 team a call on 51323700 or email Matthew Suter.         

Matthew.Suter@education.vic.gov.au

Matt Suter

Year 8 Team Leader