Day of the Dead + Mock Elections

Mock Elections

As the capstone event of our Year 8 Civics curriculum in Humanities, the Year 8 students participated in Mock Elections on the 29th of October. Students developed a party platform and participated in elections with the support from their Humanities teachers and Amy Carpenter from the Victorian Electoral Commission. Students developed campaigns as varied as the ‘Animal Justice Party’, ‘Anarkiddies’, and the ‘Connect 4 Climate’ Party and many more amazing campaigns. 

Campaign video for Model Election 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v7TvNRnpIQaUkhPGC2em5-P1PD9ML0O-/view?usp=sharing

“This was a new experience. I got an understanding of what it is like to vote, and what it will be like in future.” Olivia W 8C 

“It was good to hear people’s perspectives on certain issues and their opinions. It was good to experience was voting can be like.” 

Willem V 8C 

“It was pretty cool. I liked hearing all the debates. I will take away that voting is hard, I found it hard to choose my number one preference.” 

Beatriz K 8E 

Thank you Year 8s for your dedication to the democratic process! 

Chloe Tayler

Student reflections on the "Day of the Dead"

Yesterday was the day of the dead celebration at Coburg High School. This day was celebrated because Spanish along with Mandarin is the official second language of Coburg High, making it important to celebrate all the Mexican traditions. Many of the students prepared decorations, food, music and activities for others to enjoy. Some of the activities included a game made by the Aztecs to bring a little history in the day, making skulls out of salted clay and a trivia game about key facts about the Day of the dead. The decorations were made by students of all ages which included paper picado (cut paper) that were made out of tissue paper, Flores (flowers) that were made of tissue paper, Calavera (skull) that were decorated on paper and each class made an ofrenda (alter) for someone that has passed away. The Aztec game was to help the students understand Mexican history with the Aztecs and how they celebrated Día de los Muerto like trivia was made to help the students understand day of the dead further, the Skull is a very important item to the day because Mexicans use it to symbolise that they are not afraid of death and that they play with it so making the skulls was to understand the culture of the symbol. The paper cut outs and the flowers are decorations to make it feel festive and the altar made by each class was made to understand the traditions of the Day of the Dead.

Deb P

Yesterday we celebrated Day Of The Dead or Dia De Los Muertos in Spanish. We celebrated DOTD because it is a very important part of honouring the dead in Spanish culture. We did lots of cool activities like dressing up, face painting, skull making, trivia and we even played a traditional Mexican board game. It is important to dress up in costumes and do face painting at DOTD. Most of the time you dress up or face paint as a skeleton but yesterday I got face painted as Zenyatta, a character from my favourite video game. There was also some traditional Mexican food to eat at lunch. Although I didn’t buy anything it still smelled really good so I stayed around where the food was. We made skulls out of clay that was soft when we made it but if we wanted to keep it we could wait for it to harden and then decorate them. I couldn’t make a good skull so I didn’t keep mine but some of the other people in my class made some really cool designs. Day Of The Dead is really fun and I am very glad that we did it yesterday.

Noah E

Yesterday at school was one of the funniest days that could happen at school, we celebrated Día de los muerto which means dead of the dead in English. We celebrated with how Mexicans celebrate it like face painting, skull making and playing traditional games (well not really), but my favourite thing out of everything was of course the food which was amazing. I tried tamales and this drink that contains rice, water, vanilla, a bit of milk and sugar and made me die for it and I wanted to get more but I didn't want to waste all my money. Each part of the day was symbolising the day of dead like the skulls and dressing up in Day of the Dead clothes.

Namira S