Junior School Report

Congratulations to all junior school students and staff who have continued to produce excellent work online during this remote period. We would like to thank all students, staff and families for your support, assistance and great attitude towards learning throughout Term 3. We are proud of the efforts and commitment of our junior students in all their classes onsite and online and extra - curricular activities they have been involved in.

It has been great to see many fantastic learning experiences taking place online, as we have been dropping in on various classes and observing fantastic work by students and staff. 

All Year 7 and 8 students have gone through the process this term of selecting subjects on Edval for 2022. Thank you to all students who logged onto our year level assemblies and then successfully submitted their subject selections online. Well done and keep up the great work everyone. 

Year 7 Reflections from Term 3 2021

Bruce Kingsbury Service 

The Bruce Kingsbury Ceremony was a very emotional experience. It was one of the most inspirational and moving events that I have ever been involved in. Hearing the stories of the people who were related to the men who served in the 2nd/14th Battalion was the part that moved me the most. Their stories were amazing and filled with the heroism of their family members and a rich history that the school celebrates. It was so motivating, listening to the past scholarship recipients, talk about their experiences with the 2nd/14th Battalion. People talked about what the Second 14th Battalion meant to them and that was amazing to hear. Prior to the Bruce Kingsbury Ceremony, I was unaware how connected the school was to the Battalion and how much this meant to everybody involved. It was an honour to be involved and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to contribute to and attend the ceremony. 

Performing Arts

Trying to do a subject like Performing Arts online, is challenging to say the least. Usually when doing this subject face to face we have the opportunity to create dances, act out plays and sing songs. We are still attempting to do this whilst online. We have had to create modified versions of these tasks. For example, when we create and perform dances we adapt to the space we are in, like the foyer in the library. Also, we sometimes ask friends and family to act out a part in a play. Some people responded with joy, whilst others were horrified but did it anyway. I think they really enjoyed it despite their initial resistance. Singing has mostly stayed the same, except now we perform to an audience online. This I can only assume must be scary.

We have not been able to perform our production this term but our hard work and effort is sure not to be wasted. During multiple periods of lockdown, the production has been postponed. However, it is only an assurance that this event is going to be even more well-rehearsed. Those involved know that after this event has being deferred so many times, the performers are only going to enjoy and appreciate it even more. Preparations are continuing throughout this time of uncertainty. Rehearsals are mostly conducted via TEAMS and most of us look forward to these, especially after a challenging school day online. Lockdown may have hindered us in many ways but despite all the challenges COVID throws us, it has had some wonderful benefits in terms of us collaborating and perfecting our school production!

Science Week

Recently, we had Science Week. It was about Food by Design.

There were many activities that were online every lunchtime and open to everyone to come along with their lunch and have some fun!

Personally, I loved the scavenger hunt where we had to find the food item in 60 seconds from a riddle! There were many activities ranging from quizzes to making ice cream with only cream, ice and salt!

These super fun activities were great for students and their families who were in lockdown, bored and wanted something to keep them occupied! We have all done an incredible job during lockdown with online learning and this was a great way for us to relax and take our minds off these stressful times! We are all showing amazing signs of resilience. Keep up the great work and can’t wait to see everyone back at school soon!

Literacy Week / Health & PE Week

In the last a couple of  weeks there were activities during lunchtime from 1:00-1:20 celebrating book week. These activities were so much fun. They involved Kahoot quizzes with prizes to be won, fun writing and reading tasks and on Friday, you could dress up as your favorite book characters and be in the book week costume parade. I joined almost every lunchtime. The activities were fun, ranging from the book scavenger hunt to making green eggs and ham. Good job to everyone who joined. I surely don’t need to say how much fun it was to the people who attended. Thank you to the English teachers and Ms Scott who organized this fun educational week.

I am also going to touch on Health and Fitness week. This week is Health and Fitness week, so like last week there are fun activities all throughout lunch, ranging from workouts to making healthy snacks. All the P.E teachers helped running lunch time activities. If you didn't have time during lunch, you could always just participate in the challenges. What this means is there were a bunch of challenges, for example footy kicking rolled up socks or taking off your jumper while in a plank position. They were fun and you could record yourself doing these challenges and send them in to Mr Gayfer for the chance to win prizes. There was also STEPtember which you could also participate in if signed up. If you singed up for it, you could record your steps and enter a school leader board to see who did the most steps in September, while raising money. The amount of walking you did raised money for people living with Cerebral Palsy. So we got active during Health and Fitness week. Its was not just healthy but fun!!

Year 8 Reflections from Term 3 2021

Wear it Purple Day

Wear It Purple day 2021 is a day celebrating the individual diversity in which our school proudly presented on the 27th of August. This included many variations of sexual orientation, commonly known as the LGBTQI+ community. To celebrate this day, Reservoir High School organised a variety of activities for all students to participate in. Unfortunately, this celebration had to be done online due to the current restrictions, but we all managed to participate with what physically limited activities were available. Everyone who had their camera on had the 'Wear It Purple Day' logo for 2021 as their background, and many students participated in an LGBTQI+ based Kahoot at lunchtime. It was quite competitive! Great fun! Overall, the day was well organised and entertaining despite the inconvenience of remote learning. I’m sure everyone who participated would say the same thing. 

                       A big thanks to Mr Price and the RAH group for organising!!!

 Remote learning from school

We had to come to school like we normally did prior to lockdown. We had to be at school at 8:55am and come in our school uniform as per usual. All of the students were sent to the library and we had to log onto compass and join the teams meetings and webexes. 

We had some amazing teachers that were caring and looking after us during face-to-face learning. Sometimes the teachers even brought us food and treats throughout the day. As fun as face-to-face learning was I would much rather be at home doing online learning with the rest of my class. If I was doing online learning I would wake up at 8:55 and then just log onto my webex meetings and would still be in my PJs. I must say though it was much easier being in school because we had access to face-to-face help and there were no distractions whereas at home I would be on my phone constantly. 

Overall I didn’t really like having to come to school everyday however it has been quite fun and enjoyable. 

My experiences during remote-home learning

I like the home part, but I dislike the learning because I find that learning at school in a classroom is easier than it is to learn at home.

I have found that when I log on for each lesson, it gives structure to my days and when I have a plan and apply myself, I get my work done faster.

Getting my work done faster means that I can enjoy some free time because all my work is complete. 

I much prefer at-school learning.

Remote Learning from school

For these past weeks in lockdown I have been doing online learning from school which is great I think because I can’t get distracted by anything. 

I also get face-to-face support from different teachers which is great because I love it. It’s so helpful with my learning needs. I also get to see some of my friends or meet and make new ones.

I still have to wear my school uniform everyday as well as my mask in and outdoors. It makes it very difficult as I am at school all day, my friends at home do not need to wear their masks all day. 

What a rollercoaster ! 

What a rollercoaster Term 3 has turned out to be!  We started the first week happy to be back at school and ready to learn. But did that change quickly. During this term it has been really important to stay connected with the Reservoir High School community. We have done this in a variety of ways including fun lunchtime activities. We had Science Week with trivia and science experiments and Book week quizzes and dress ups.  Wear it Purple day saw us celebrate LGBTIQA+ young people and STEPtember will see us raise money for people living with Cerebral Palsy.

In the classroom our commitment to learning has seen us online with our teachers for each lesson. 

This has given us the ability for more interactive and engaging learning.  One of the more creative and resourceful activities we have been assigned, is for our STEAM subject. The instructions were to research, design and build our own sustainable and eco-friendly model home.  We were tasked with addressing environmental factors that included, drought, cost of power, use of finite resources, lack of affordable housing and growing population. 

Our designs show energy saving innovations and our models were built with recyclable items from around the home. This has given us the opportunity to think about our future and they way we can live a more sustainable life.

Hope everyone is doing well, and getting through this challenging time. Looking forward to Term 4 back at school……..hopefully. 

Bellow is Indi’s Eco-House model made at home for STEAM class.

Junior School Team

Darryl Forbes – Junior School Leader

Mrs Tammy Baines – Junior School Office Manager

Ms Christine Farrugia – Year 7 Coordinator

Mr Greg Irvin - Year 8 Coordinator

Ms Natalie Manser – Assistant Principal