Around the classrooms

Geologist Guest Speaker

To further the students’ understanding of our current topic, ‘Geology’, we were fortunate to have a geologist come chat to the Year 8 Enhancement classes. Our guest presenter, Shawn Panton, has been a geologist for over 27 years. He has worked in 9 countries throughout his career and has been involved in mineral exploration and mining for resources such as gold, copper, nickel and metallurgical coal. He has also worked in geotechnical engineering work, tunnels and bridge construction, environmental assessments, and teaching Geology at Melbourne University. Shawn discussed the relevance of content from our curriculum to real world applications and careers in geology.

Ms Mel Erwin 

Year 8 Enhancement Teacher

From the students

On Friday 7 October, the two Year 8 Enhancement classes were lucky enough to hear about the field of geology from guest speaker, geologist Shawn Panton. The experience was incredible, especially since it dove deeper into geology as well as how interesting a career in geology can be. We looked at the numerous types of rocks - igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic - and how they can be easily classified. As Shawn works in the gold mines, my favourite part was looking at the gold that he brought in as well as exploring his very extensive rock collection. His collection featured numerous rocks including basalt, obsidian, limestone and many, many more. Even though silver is not a rock, Shawn also brought in a solid 1kilo bar of silver as an addition to his collection. Hearing about Shawn’s adventures and explorations in line of work made us all consider a job in the field of geology and how even though it’s mainly rocks, the people you meet and the new cultures you immerse yourself in, are all a wonderful part of it. Shawn’s presentation taught both the classes so much about geology and how exciting it is. 

Raga K 

Geologist Shawn Panton come in to do a talk and presentation for the two enhancement classes. Shawn is a geologist who now works in gold mines to help extract gold. During this session we learnt in more depth about all three types of rocks; Igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic. We also learnt a lot more about the subcategories of each type. In addition, we learnt more about the different ways to help categorise minerals and rocks, and some of these aspects used include lustre, streak, hardness and cleavage. One of the things I found most interesting was how they extracted gold from gold mines. In the gold mines they would extract the gold from large quartz veins running through the mine. To break up the quartz they use light explosives! From there they take the chunks to a processing factory to extract the gold. Afterwards they have no use for the quartz, so it is not kept. During the presentation he brought in some different rock and crystal samples for us to pass around, including a silver bar, similar to a gold bar, which was made of pure silver and was worth around $11,000. Afterwards Shawn gave some of the students a small piece of quartz as prizes for their participation.

Jasmine A 

Mel Erwin

Science teacher