School Highlights (cont'd)
Years 7 and 8 Battle of the Books
Fiona O'Rourke, Head of Library and Digital Resourcing
The Battle of the Books held this week certainly lived up to its name. Earlier in the term, the Kilvington Library reached out to St Leonard’s College Library to challenge them to a ‘literature duel’.
Teams of four to five students from Years 7 and 8 were organised from each school, with each member responsible for reading at least two texts.
In our Year 7 Team, we had Annabelle Chick, Aarit Arora, Hannah Chalmers and Zoe McInnes. Our Year 8 Team consisted of Georgia Thompson, Ayaan Gupta, Josie Clyne, Tessa Glowinski and Stephanie Verginis. The combined Years 7 and 8 Team featured Milan Bays, William Walsh, Marcus McGloughlin and Kieran Yen.
To gear up for the duel, the teams practised throughout the term, culminating in a practice quiz on Wednesday 22 May.
Finally, the big day arrived! All hands were on deck from the library. Vanessa Grosso and Natasha Allday (Head of Library, St Leonard’s) were our scorekeepers, with Elizabeth Paterson (St Leonard’s) as timekeeper and JoAnne Li as the marker for our paper round.
As the Quizmaster, I reminded the teams of the rules. Each team had 30 seconds to answer a question once it was asked, and if they answered incorrectly or time ran out, the other teams could buzz in to steal the points.
From the opening question to the final buzzer, the battle was tense, and every score was fiercely coveted! After approximately 100 questions answered per team, the scores were tallied. With bated breath, teams waited to hear the announcement of the winners.
It was not to be! Both the Year 8 Teams from St Leonard’s and Kilvington had equal scores! The tie-breaker question came down to a fastest-on-the-buzzer showdown, with St Leonard’s College clinching the victory by a millisecond!
Congratulations to our Year 8 runners-up. We are very proud of all our teams. They conducted themselves admirably, exhibiting our school values of respect, perseverance and curiosity. We also extend our congratulations to St Leonard’s College and look forward to challenging them again next year.
Year 9 Impact Program - It's Everyone's Business
Rishab Saravana Babu and Scarlett Rickard, Year 9
As part of the Year 9 Impact Program, Year 9s participated in the ‘It’s Everyone’s Business’ initiative throughout Terms 1 and 2.
We had to choose an issue we were passionate about and offer a solution in the form of a social enterprise. Over several months, we explored real-life social businesses like Big Issue and Sisterworks and began developing our business ideas.
Our projects aimed to address various social issues, including mental health, sexual and domestic violence, and social isolation.
We were fortunate to have Monash University facilitators assist us in identifying our values and helping us finalise our drafts and pitches. We then worked on refining our public speaking skills, eventually pitching our final ideas to our peers and teachers.
These pitches were judged in a ‘shark tank’ style evaluation, with six of the 24 groups being selected to present at the Impact Expo to an audience of peers, teachers and parents.
Overall, 'It’s Everyone’s Business' provided valuable insights into the problems that negatively affect our society and equipped us with the skills to bring our ideas to life. As a cohort, we all experienced personal growth and are eagerly looking forward to what the next semester will bring!
Year 10 Media excursion to ACMI
Ewan Harrison, Year 10
On Monday 13 May, the Year 10 Media class attended an ACMI workshop on video game narratives. Together, we took the train into the city, grabbed a bite to eat from a small café, and then headed to the workshop.
Upon arrival, we met our ACMI educators and started the workshop with an overview of different types of video game narratives, from those offering no choice to those providing almost complete freedom. This introduction set the stage for our hands-on activity, where we designed and created our own video game narratives using the text-based program Twine.
After stopping for lunch, we returned to ACMI and continued working on our games. We added sound and visual effects, then tested and played each other’s creations.
Overall, we had an amazing time at ACMI. We learned many interesting things and enjoyed gaining insight into the thought and structure behind some of our favorite video games.