Junior School Report
Message from the Director of Learning
- Ms. Alice Paget
Welcome back to the Year 7 and 8 students, parents and guardians to the new school year at Westall Secondary College! To all the new parents at the College, we endeavour to make your child’s transition into secondary schooling, a smooth and positive experience! We hope that the transition program during the end of 2018 and the first few weeks of the school year, has helped your child to feel comfortable, supported and excited about the year ahead.
The College is thrilled to be rolling out a new junior school structure in 2019. This year all Literacy (English/EAL) and Numeracy (Mathematics) classes at Westall Secondary College will have a mixture of Year 7 and 8 students. The rationale behind this decision is to ensure that each student’s Literacy development is our number one focus. The new structure will reduce the variability of students’ Literacy levels in each classroom. This in turn, complements our Explicit Direct Instruction model of teaching and allowing teachers to utilise specific Literacy / EAL strategies within the classroom, and promote growth in each curriculum area.
We have a range of semester elective subjects in Year 7 and 8 to allow the students to explore their passions and interests, including: Music, Digital Technology, Food Technology, Dance/Drama and Woodwork, as well as Weekly Sport and our iCreate elective every Wednesday afternoon.
The junior school is also excited to announce the 2019 Junior School Camp at Camp Rumbug, in Foster North, from the 20th to 22nd March. The Junior School Camp will provide students with a specialised learning environment whereby they can develop strong relationships with both their peers and teachers, in an endeavour to support their wellbeing and learning outcomes throughout the year. Students will be involved in a variety of adventure, initiative and team-based activities, assisting to build their self-confidence and develop team-work, resilience and interpersonal skills. Activities will include: open canoeing, raft building, low ropes course, initiative exercises, orienteering, mud run, team challenges and trust exercises.
Your involvement in your child’s education can have a great impact on their schooling. Please support the junior school team by staying informed through checking your child’s diary and the ongoing use of Compass. Please make sure you have bought all the required uniform, textbooks, exercise books and stationary to ensure your child has the best learning opportunities throughout the year. Please don’t hesitate to contact the year level coordinators if you are having any issues with this, we are always here to support you. The junior school team would like to wish everyone a successful year ahead!
JUNIOR SCHOOL TEAM LEADERS
Alice Paget
Director of Learning (Junior School)
Paget.alice.l@edumail.vic.gov.au
Year 7 Coordinator
Rebekah Vass
Vass.rebekah.r@edumail.vic.gov.au
Year 8 Coordinator
Anna Papagiannopoulos
Papagionnopoulos.anna@edumail.vic.gov.au
YEAR 7 ADVENTURE DAY
On the 5th February, the Year 7 students set out on our exciting adventure day trip to the Enchanted Adventure Gardens in Arthurs Seat. Zoi, one of our talented Year 7 students, has written about her experience below:
Arthurs Seat Recount
The first week of school, the new Year 7's went to Arthurs Seat, to participate in exciting and fun activities. High School for many of us can be scary. It’s a new environment with new faces so when I heard we were going to Arthurs seat I thought it was the perfect opportunity to meet my new peers.
When arriving to Arthurs Seat, I was thrilled to participate in an outside of school environment with my group I was put into. Our first activity was Tube Slides. At first, I was anxious. I had never done tube sliding before but it did seem like a fun experience. Too scared to go all by myself I asked one of my friends in the group to join me. Being there not by myself but with a friend seemed much easier and less frightening. After I tried it once or twice, no more did I feel scared, rather I felt confident! By the time we needed to head to our next activity I lost count of how many times I had gone on the tube slides! It was fun to try something new and compete with the other people in my team!
Next, we headed to Tree Surfing! Being someone who doesn’t enjoy heights I can assure you, I was not excited. Being up in trees, meters above the ground and doing obstacle courses, wasn’t something I thought I had the confidence to do. I knew I was safe, I knew I wasn’t just going to fall off, I knew nothing bad could’ve happened but still, the fear was there. The only way to get through this was to overcome my fear, and it didn’t have to be alone. I had all my new friends with me. Going through the obstacles we all encouraged each other, worked together as a team and finished the rest of the activities. We also, all together, had our amazing teachers supporting and knowing that they had our backs if we needed help.
While at Arthurs Seat I met several new friends and teachers. The activities we all participated in were amazing and I hope I can experience going to Arthurs Seat again. Encouraging, working as a team and learning about each other along the way made me realise that High School might not be as scary as it first seemed.
YEAR 7 AND YEAR 8 WEEKLY SPORT
Our Year 7 & 8 students have now started their weekly sport competition for this term. Students are representing the school in Volleyball, Cricket, Tennis and Softball/Baseball. Each week we have a head-to-head match up with another in the Kingston area which includes Parkdale, Brighton, Sandringham, Bentleigh, McKinnon and Mordialloc Secondary Colleges. At the end of the term, the team with the most amount of wins will go on to represent the Kingston division in the Southern Metropolitan Region, with the chance to make it through to the State Finals.
So far, our Year 7 boys and girls and Year 8 girls’ volleyball teams remain undefeated, while our other teams have experienced a few close defeats and will be looking to continue their development of each sport for the remainder of the term. We wish all teams the very best for the rest of the competition.
Mr. Jonathan Roberts
Sport Coordinator
Attention
all Year 7 to Year 9
Parents and Guardians
As part of your child’s English/EAL program, students need to buy a workbook that is designed to improve their spelling and writing across the curriculum. It was included in the booklist as ‘additional resources’. We were in negotiation last year to get the best price for our Westall Community, and I am happy to say that we received a discount of $10 off the listed price. The cost of ‘Spelling Through Morphographs’ will now be $25. You or your child can pay for this either by card or cash at the front office, or cash payments can be made to Ms Dewhurst or Ms Bray in the Junior School (Balook Centre).
Ms . Samantha Dewhurst
Literacy & EAL Learning Specialist
Message from the
Year 8 Captains
We’ve had an great start to Year 8 and 2019!
It has been a challenge so far because we have had new changes around the school, like new teachers and combining classes with the Year 7s but so far, we really enjoy working with them! Otherwise, it’s been going really well and we know that a lot of exciting things are going to happen!
We’re looking forward to Harmony Day where we get a chance to express and celebrate all the cultures that make up our school. We’re also looking forward to Junior School camp, where we hope to make lots of new friends and memories.
We look forward to being the Junior School Captains for 2019!
Zaima Syed and Kellan Carnahan
Year 8