AGTV COMPETITION WINNERS 2021

It is with great pleasure that we are finally able to announce the prize winners for 2021.

Due to the late submission dates of this year’s AGTV competitions, we only received the final results last Friday. It was a considerable effort for students to commit to an additional challenge, sometimes they completed parts of their work during lockdown.

Congratulations to our outstanding German students who won several prizes in the following Competitions:

The AGTV Werbespot Competition 2021 involved planning, filming and editing a 60-second German-language promotional video, which this year required students to promote actions in response to the theme: "Global denken, lokal handeln" (Think globally, act locally).

Second Prize: Katy Do, Rowen Hull, Georgia Linardou and Ewa Agboton (Year 9 Students)

Third Prize: Eva Gray, Juniper Benkoe, Emily McLaverty and Joleigh Theron (Year 9 Students)

Honourable Mention: Anthony Kostelac, Aleksanteri Tuomi, Pietari Tuomi and Ilya Zyuzin (Year 9 Students)

Sophia Diegelmann, who completed Year 12 this year, produced a podcast about the German Carneval and won the the First Prize in the Podcast Competition. She also won the Second Prize in the Song Writing Competition with her ‘Merkel Rap’.

The prize winner of the Writing Competition with the theme Böse Märchenfigur (evil fairytale character) was in the category Tagebuch (diary entry), Sofia Linardou (Year 11).

Runner-up in the category poem was Lamija Buturovic (Year 7) who submitted a poem ´Der böse Wolf´(The Bad Wolf).

Students will receive prizes, medals and certificates in early 2022.

Congratulations also to all students who participated and submitted their entries to these competitions.

EMAIL EXCHANGE PROJECT WITH GERMANY 2021

Sadly our students have not been able to be involved in actual school exchanges to Europe again this year. However, Year 8 and 9 German classes have had a chance to practice German with an email partner. Over the last few weeks they have been corresponding with students in our sister-school Alfred-Wegener-Schule in Kirchhain near Marburg, as well as the Max Planck school in Göttingen.

McKinnon students have been matched with a partner with similar interests and enjoy discovering that German teenagers are also into things like Tik-tok and Netflix. Traditional sports like soccer and basketball are also hot topics. German students were keen to know more about life in Australia, and our students enjoyed discovering the similarities and differences between the two cultures. Topics discussed this year included AFL, snowboarding and winter sports. McKinnon students learned that in a regional area hobbies such as horse-riding and junior fire-brigade are not uncommon. The challenges of being a high-school student during covid-19 was of course a common theme in correspondence again this year.

At home, some students also chatted with their partners on Instagram and Whatsapp and played online games with them. One of the participating teachers at the school in Kirchhain reported to us on the weekend that: “Last Friday we had our parent-teacher-talks (via phone) and many parents said that their kids were quite excited about the emails from Australia and that it had boosted their interest in English.”

This is a real-life opportunity for our students to use everything that they have learned in German over the last two years, and some continue to correspond online after the project finishes. This year some eager McKinnon students even wrote to two partners! The assessment includes a ‘blog’ in the Digital Portfolio reflecting on what they have learned and thoughts on the project.

This program has been running for several years and we also have some senior students still in touch with their partner.

Karin Paal

Year 8 German Teacher

Thank you to the Year 8 German teachers, Frau Paal and Herrn Nutting, for setting up this great opportunity for international online communication for our students.

Andrea Fowler

Head of Languages

CHANGE OF LEADERSHIP IN THE LANGUAGES FACULTY

After having led this faculty for many years, I will be taking leave in Semester One in 2022. I would like to congratulate Jennifer Lynd who will lead the Languages faculty from the start of next year. Jennifer supported the faculty with her expertise in literacy and I would like to thank her for developing a detailed writing plan for the Languages faculty.

A very big thank you:

- to all language teachers for organising additional opportunities for students to participate and compete in and going far beyond what can be expected;

- to the German team and especially Mr Nutting, who has successfully established the German Exchange program that hopefully will be continued in the future. I also hope for the benefit of our students, that the exchange program to France, trips and tours to New Caledonia and Spain will be able to commence soon. I would like to thank all teachers for organising these programs in the past and accompanying students on these great experiences overseas;

- to Ms Jimenez for establishing the Spanish program and setting up a new Spanish course for Year 7s in 2022;

- to all French teachers who worked with great commitment to continuously improve the French program;

- to our Language assistants for supporting our Year 12 students throughout this challenging year;

- a special thank you also to Monsieur Chamontin for organising the Language Perfect World Championships: an event that involves the entire school community and all languages at McKinnon;

- and to all teachers and parents for supporting Language learning at McKinnon, especially during the LP World Championships, the challenging remote learning periods and when staff was urgently needed.

Finally, thank you to Pitsa for giving me the opportunity to be part of the Leadership Team at McKinnon. It has been a pleasure and honour to lead the Languages team over the many years.

I wish the McKinnon community a well-deserved holiday and an enjoyable festive season!

Andrea Fowler

Head of Languages

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