Year Seven-Nine

 Coaching Parade Campus

Secondary School Update 

We have officially reached the halfway mark of Term Two, and there have already been many fantastic things happening across our Secondary cohorts, with plenty more still to come.

Year Nine Camp 

Our Year Nine students are eagerly preparing for their upcoming City Experience Camp, taking place from the 1st to the 3rd of June. Throughout the camp, students will have the opportunity to explore Melbourne and visit a range of iconic locations, including the Queen Victoria Market, MCG, and Eureka Tower.

Alongside these experiences, students will also enjoy a range of fun recreational activities such as movies, arcade games, and ice skating. We look forward to seeing students build independence, strengthen friendships, and create lasting memories during the experience.

Year Seven Camp 

Looking ahead to the end of term, our Year Seven Camp will take place from the 22nd to the 24th of June. This adventure-style camp provides students with opportunities to develop teamwork, cooperation, resilience, and confidence through a variety of challenging and engaging activities. 

Camps such as these also play an important role in building positive relationships between students and staff and strengthening the sense of community within the year level.

Virtual Reality in Humanities 

In Humanities, our Year Seven students have also been engaging with exciting new technologies as part of their study of Ancient Civilisations. Using our Virtual Reality headsets, students have been able to immerse themselves in historical experiences, including exploring what the inside of an Egyptian tomb may have looked like in 1550 BC. Students also experienced aspects of daily life in Ancient Greece, where they undertook activities such as making bread, as people would have during that time period.

These immersive learning experiences have helped bring history to life and further deepen students’ understanding of the ancient world.

We would like to thank Mr. McNabb for the work behind the scenes and the engaging lessons he put together for our students. 

Attitudes to Schools Survey

We would also like to acknowledge the many students who participated in the Attitudes to School Survey this term. 

This survey provides students with an important opportunity to have their voice heard and share their experiences about school, including learning, wellbeing, relationships, and connectedness. 

Student feedback plays a valuable role in helping the College reflect on what is working well and identify areas where we can continue to improve and better support all students.

Food Technology

Year Nine

For the first three weeks of term, the Year Nine students have been working hard to compete in The Great Saltwater Bake Off! In groups, students had to create a recipe that involved shortcrust pastry, and then they had two weeks to create and present their dish to a panel of judges. Seeing everyone's creativity and dedication was amazing, and the judges were very impressed with everyone's dishes. The winning group on Wednesday was Vanya, Dot and Tayla, who created a chocolate tart with homemade raspberry coulis and the winning group from Friday was Cibe, Kyra and Zyila, who created a lemon meringue tart served with a lemon drizzle. 

Year Eight

The Year Eight students have been exploring a variety of dishes in food technology this semester. As a class we have unpacked a variety of cooking concepts as we strengthen our skillsets. Last week the students have been learning how to make fresh pasta with a homemade napoletana sauce. This was lots of fun for us to practise our kneading techniques and learning how to use a pasta machine.

Year Seven

The Year Seven students have been having some fun exploring how to work in a commercial kitchen setting. We have explored how to safely use knives, stoves and ovens when making a variety of dishes like muffins, apple turnovers and tacos. Last week Students enjoyed making red lentil dahl while learning about the difference between boiling and simmering.

Saltwater Cafe

Our Year Seven, Eight and Nine Cafe students have been very busy over the past few weeks, putting their skills into action across a number of exciting events.

The students were recently asked to contribute 220 biscuits for the Primary Schools Walk and Ride to School initiative. The biscuits were a huge hit on the morning, and our Year 9 Cafe students were also invited to help hand them out, along with other snacks, to students and families.

Our Year Nine Cafe students also had the opportunity to experience an authentic cafe shift during Education Week, when we opened the cafe to parents. The students did an outstanding job keeping up with orders and providing great service throughout the session.

A special shout-out goes to our baristas of the day, Aseem and River, who made some amazing cafe drinks and helped make the event such a success.

Well done to all of our Cafe students on their hard work, enthusiasm and professionalism.

English 

Year Seven

In Year Seven English, students have been engaging in their novel study of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Throughout the term, students have been tracking the Hero’s Journey Percy undergoes and taking inspiration from this to craft their own Hero’s Journey narrative. In addition to creative writing, students have analytically explored aspects of the text, considering the effect of language devices and tone, and reflecting on their impact through TEAL paragraph writing. 

Year Eight

This term, Year Eight English students have continued exploring the world of dystopian fiction through final chapters of The Hunger Games and the film adaptation directed by Gary Ross. Students have examined important themes such as power, survival, inequality, rebellion and media manipulation.

Throughout the term, students have developed their analytical writing skills by learning how to structure paragraphs and use evidence effectively in essays. Classes have participated in annotation activities, group discussions, theme investigations, and collaborative learning tasks focused on analysing characters, quotes and author techniques such as juxtaposition and irony. 

Students have also worked on building their academic vocabulary and confidence in analytical writing through scaffolded activities, peer feedback sessions and essay planning workshops. It has been fantastic to see students growing in their ability to explain ideas, support arguments with evidence and think critically about the messages presented in the text.

We are very proud of the effort and engagement shown by our students this term and look forward to seeing their final analytical essays.

Year 9  – English

This term in Year Nine English, students have been exploring Media Studies through the film adaptation of The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman Jr. and based on the novel by Angie Thomas.

Throughout the unit, students have developed their active annotation skills, learning how to closely analyse visual and cinematic techniques to deepen their understanding of character, theme, and message. During a second viewing of the film, students applied these annotation strategies independently, identifying key moments, analysing how meaning is constructed for the audience.

Prior to this, students were introduced to the art of analytical essay writing. Teachers scaffolded the process by explicitly teaching students how to identify command terms within prompts to recognise when an analytical response is required. Students then practised unpacking prompts to determine the key ideas and areas requiring focused analysis.

To support this learning, students were introduced to the P-E-T-E-R essay structure: Point, Evidence, Technique, Explanation, and Reader’s Response. This framework was compared to the more familiar structure of persuasive writing, helping students recognise the distinct purpose and conventions of analytical responses.

Students have continued to apply these skills with teacher guidance and support, all in preparation for their upcoming summative assessment task. We look forward to seeing the continued growth and confidence students demonstrate in their analytical writing.

WynSpeak Public Speaking competition

On the evening of May 26th, a number of our students proudly represented the school at the WynSpeak Public Speaking Competition held at the Altona Civic Centre. The competition is run annually by Rotary International in conjunction with local Apex Groups and brings together students from schools across Melbourne’s western suburbs.

Students spent several weeks preparing and refining their four-minute speeches, developing their confidence, communication skills, and ability to engage an audience. Competing schools included Suzanne Cory High School, Bacchus Marsh Grammar, Williamstown High School, along with several other local schools.

We were fortunate to have three junior representatives competing on the night:

• Juntong (Moni) Mao
• Ayaana Bhardwaj

• Shivani Anandbabu

   

We would also like to acknowledge the many students across Years 7–9 who prepared speeches and participated in the selection process. Their dedication and willingness to challenge themselves should be commended.

A special congratulations goes to Ayaana Bhardwaj for winning the Short Notice Speech Competition — an outstanding achievement and a testament to her composure, quick thinking, and speaking ability.

We wish all winners from Round 8 the very best of luck in the upcoming finals. Students are also encouraged to keep an eye out for the upcoming TEDx initiative, which will provide another exciting opportunity to continue developing and showcasing their public speaking skills.