Year 9 City Experience Camp

Humanities teachers have been busy this semester organising wonderful opportunities for students to experience life beyond the classroom.   

Validating research findings published at Oxford University last year confirm that students who study Humanities develop highly employable skills of communication, creativity and working in a team.  

Citizenship and City Experience  

This year we designed a new Civics and Citizenship project to coincide with a Middle School overnight city camp. Geography & Civics Classes 9A, 9B, 9C, 9D, and 9E travelled into the city, stayed in a hostel and worked collaboratively over two days to find out what makes Melbourne so special. 

The intention of this project is for students to work in a team, ask questions about the city they live in, and bring this information back into the classroom to communicate a story on the voices that make up a society.  

In learning from the past and observing the city today, students can build valuable knowledge about themselves and the many perspectives of others living in Melbourne. 

At night we experienced the city from the Melbourne Skydeck, nearly 300 metres high, and grabbed dinner in one of the many food venues.  

Here are some of the Year 9 student reflection pieces about their experience:

Ean C (9B):

As we walked across the city, the sound of trams, cars and thousands of people going on with their day-to-day lives. I felt a warm embrace from the City of Melbourne as we hyped ourselves for the best adventure yet. 

The Year 9 city research camp not only was filled with work but also some great moments such as visiting the Eureka Tower Skydeck and being able to travel the CBD. To be able to conduct research across the city while having fun and eating great food was amazing. 

From a scavenger hunt to an experience on an 89-storey building’s Skydeck, it almost seemed that the fun and work was balanced out, just like the Yin and Yang.

Even though almost everyone stayed up until past midnight and got little sleep, I felt like it was worth it. I feel like my theme for this year’s camp is freedom. So, through the course of 2 days and 1 night, we worked, we laughed, we enjoyed and had the most fun in such little time we had.  

Yelena R (9D):

Half of the Year 9s had an amazing opportunity, to go on a geography excursion for a little civics project. The main thing was we all had to keep in mind on how a topic that we have chosen is related to the research question. 

My group and I picked the topic foods and went around the city and researched and looked around at all the different cafes and restaurants observing different cuisines, cultures and how we could ensure that people who come from different classes had easy access to healthy foods.  

We all had so much fun walking around the city on our own during the daytime each having an individual task to contribute to our group. However, at night we all had the amazing opportunity to go visit the Skydeck and we all got to experience such amazing views in the city at night. 

Overall, the city experience was such an amazing opportunity to go ahead and learn more about Melbourne and have fun.  

Kaya B (9D):

The busy noise of the city filled my ears, the buzz of excitement and chatter penetrated the air. Us Year 9s were more than lucky to have a camp and city experience this year. This was part of our geography and civics CAT, as we had to collect data relating to our topics around inclusion in Melbourne. 

We got to plan out our two days at the city, conducting research, exploring, and seeing what the city is all about! 

There was so many places to see and explore, from visiting QV to looking at the amazing art at the Koorie Heritage trust. We were so lucky as we got to visit other cool and well-known places in Melbourne, as well as getting to see the spectacular view from Eureka Tower and having delicious ice cream after! 

Going on this camp really allowed us to take on more responsibilities, like learning how to better manage our time and get things done efficiently while still having a blast. 

Overall, this experience was really good for us. We learned lots of useful skills and got to explore the city.