Middle Years News
Time for a break!
As Term 3 comes to a close, I would like to commend every one of our students for your hard work, resilience, and dedication throughout these past few months. You have faced challenges head-on, embraced new learning opportunities, and continued to grow as students and individuals. I’d like to remind you that every hurdle you've overcome and every lesson you've learned has contributed to your own personal growth and development.
As we head into the upcoming break, make sure that you take time to relax and recharge, but also reflect on your accomplishments, particularly those challenging obstacles that you successfully navigated. Term 4 awaits, and it's another chance to set new goals, achieve even greater success and shine. Keep believing in yourselves, stay curious, and keep striving for your individual excellence. You have the potential to accomplish amazing things, and your journey is continuing.
I look forward to seeing you back here, ready to tackle new challenges and create more wonderful memories together. Have a fantastic break!
Mr Steven Tkaczuk - Head of Middle Years
Student Learning - Middle Year Science
Carl Sagan once quipped ‘We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology’. Here at GNLC, the Science department is dedicated to proving this comment as outdated. For our Middle Years students in particular, Science is perhaps more a way of thinking than it is a body of knowledge.
Science teachers at GNLC are committed to developing our students’ passion and interest in Science learning. We firmly believe Science is all about discovery and our hands-on teaching model means students learn by being involved in investigations, experiments and practical activities. This does however, pose a challenge. If Science education is going to focus on discovery linked to strong theory, as Carl once again observed ‘it then necessitates a certain comfort with being wrong, a tolerance for the fear of failure – perhaps cultivating that capacity is an essential prerequisite not only for Science but also for the basic appreciation of Science.’
Year 8 students are currently learning about concepts concerning energy and energy efficiency in Science; they have been challenged to design and build the best insulated house. The house, made from various materials, has a beaker of hot water as its heat source. In evidence of this willingness to embrace and learn from failure, our students will test their first insulator and will then work towards a constant state of design, build, test, review and improve before selecting another insulator which may work better than their first design. With stakes high, who would believe that the results depend upon our students’ ability to harness convection, radiation and the Law of Conservation of energy to boot!
Ms Helena Lippe - Middle Year Science Teacher
Extended holidays during School Term
Families are reminded that they need to seek written permission from the College Principal to take their children out of school for extended periods of leave during school Term. On taking leave, students need to ensure that they remain up-to-date with any assessments and show endeavour to complete assessments before taking their leave.
Digital Technology - Python Class
The Year 9's have had the opportunity to have a Python class with Mr Michael Lisitsa, a volunteer with CS in Schools. Michael is a software developer and will help the students with any issues they might have with their assessment tasks.
This program is free to Australian students and supports teachers with resources for digital technologies.
The students are currently learning about Python and creating a text-based adventure game as part of their assessment task. They follow the lessons in the first five weeks of the term including using Education Perfect to complete tasks.