School News

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Live4Life

Live4Life Bass Coast South Gippsland was created in response to a reported increase from schools and agencies, in depression, anxiety, cyber bullying and self-harm which has led to the need for a coordinated response to address our young people’s mental health. 

Live4Life Bass Coast South Gippsland is made up of the following components: 

1. Delivery of Teen Mental Health First Aid to year 8 and 10 students. 

2. Parents and Teachers – Youth Mental Health First Aid training. 

3. Live4Life Crew - Yr.9  Students who volunteer to support the delivery of education sessions and run the launch, mental health promotion activities and celebration events for the year ahead. 

Teen Mental Health First Aid for Year 8 students 

Our year 8 students at MNSC have been participating in 3 x 60-minute education sessions for the Teen Mental Health First Aid program. Delivered by Mental Health First Aid accredited trainer Emma Hughes. Our students are learning to support a friend with their mental health and seek help when needed.  Further information about the course can be found at https://www.mhfa.com.au/our-courses/teen-peer-to-peer-support/teen-mental-health-first-aid/

Smoking and Vaping Ban

All parents, carers and students are reminded of the legislation that within Victoria, a person must not smoke cigarettes, including e-cigarettes/vapes (regardless of whether they contain Nicotine) within school premises and within 4 metres of any pedestrian access to school premises. Smoking or Vaping in these places is a fineable offence. The smoking and vaping ban applies to:

• anyone present on school premises during and outside of school hours including students, teachers, contractors, parents or carers or the wider community, such as sporting groups
• all activities that take place on school premises including pre-schools, kindergartens, outside school hours care, cultural, sporting or recreational activities and school fetes. Parents, carers, schools, and community all play an important role in protecting children and young people from, and educating them about, the harmful effects of smoking and vaping.

Research from the Royal Children’s Hospital shows many parents and carers are not aware of the harmful effects or how their views about smoking and vaping can impact the likelihood of a young person taking up smoking or vaping.

The Department of Education has developed resources to help you learn more about the health risks of smoking and vaping. The resources include advice about how to talk to children and young people about vaping, and where to get support. To access the resources, go to https://www.vic.gov.au/smoking-and-vaping-advice-parents  You can also view this video on smoking and vaping from experts at Melbourne's Royal Children’s Hospital, for health advice and tips for starting a conversation with young people.

Accelerando Information Melbourne Recital Centre

Melbourne Recital Centre is thrilled to open applications for our 2025 Accelerando program, encouraging and inspiring the next generation of talented and entrepreneurial musicians.

This free year-long program is open to Victorian Government Secondary School students in Years 10, 11 and 12 in 2025, who experience geographic, financial, or other barriers to accessing high quality live music performances and industry experiences.

Successful applicants will have the opportunity to receive instrumental lessons from leading artists, access world-class concerts, work with a professional mentor, participate in music industry workshops, and perform in an end of year recital in Melbourne Recital Centre’s Primrose Potter Salon.

All instrumentalists, vocalists and electronic musicians of any genres are welcome to apply. Selected applicants will be invited to audition at Melbourne Recital Centre on Saturday November 2024.

Online applications close on Friday 20 September, 2024.

More information can be found at https://www.melbournerecital.com.au/learn/accel/.

School Dental Van Visit

The School Dental initiative will be visiting Mirboo North Secondary School to provide free dental check-ups and services for students. This service is bulk billed with Medicare for eligible students under the Child Dental Benefits Schedule.  

Students will receive either a Free Dental Health screen, or if eligible, free check-up (preventative and general dental health care) in a fully functional dental truck - just like a dental clinic.

Do I need to pay anything? No, Medicare CDBS covers the cost for eligible students via bulk billing.  If your child is not eligible, ADHV will do a FREE dental Health Screen.  ADHV will check your eligibility before treatment.  

For your child to be seen, you will need to fill in the Dental Consent Form and return it to the school signed and as soon as possible.  Forms are available at the school office and will be given to all the students over the next few days.

Consent form collection & return deadline: June 14th, 2024

Dental Van Visit week is allocated for the August 5th, 2024* 

Please return all forms to the school reception. If you have any questions, please contact school reception, Emma Hughes (School Nurse) or ADHV directly at (03) 9323 9607 or via email at info@adhv.com.au

Gingerbread Houses

This was a fun and exciting project. It allowed everyone to interact with their peers and get possible design ideas and work together to make a beautiful final product. I really enjoyed this project and had a great time preparing everything. It is always pleasing to see the final product and all the gingerbread houses were very aesthetically pleasing.   

Brock MackMatthews

I really enjoyed the Gingerbread House, and I think my family did too. Gingerbread is my absolute favourite thing as it just tastes so good, and the lollies make a good contrast to the tastes of the gingerbread. Once it came home it took about one day for it to be eaten. I also really enjoyed all the processes in making it, as well as the design processes.    

Myles Bell

Creating a design before putting the lollies on was a great idea because I would have had no clue what lollies to get and where to put them. I had a blast making the Gingerbread House! It was so much fun getting creative with the decorations and seeing the final result come together. I loved how when we took the Gingerbread House home the gingerbread was still soft and not stale. Can't wait to do it again!   

Aleeah Munnich

I loved doing the project because I got to be creative and use my imagination while still doing schoolwork, I liked being able to design my Gingerbread House however I liked and having so much freedom within my gingerbread. 

Gypsybelle Wadsworth

I did genuinely enjoy making the Gingerbread House, it was fun, and I got to use creativity and my imagination. If I had to do it again, I’d experiment more with different lollies, a chimney and maybe different stencils for the actual gingerbread. 

CJ

Year 10 Work Experience

Year 10 Work Ready students have recently been out and about enjoying and learning from a week of work experience. The students have experienced some of what it’s like to work full time including early starts, cold mornings and specific industry experiences. The work experience program is student driven with work places chosen by students. They are encouraged to explore different industries and roles to assist them in developing their career pathway in the coming years. We would like to thank all of the businesses who have kindly mentored our students over this week, we appreciate your support of the program. Now we look forward to all year 10 students participating in work experience in the last week of term 3.

Karen Poland

Mobile Phones/Devices

A reminder that the Department of Education has in place a mobile phone ban that requires students who bring mobile phones to school to have them switched off and securely put away during school hours.

The Department is requiring all schools to ensure this ban is in place and enforced from the start of the 2024 school year.  The ban applies equally to all Government schools right across the state.  This helps ensure that school is a learning environment free from unnecessary distractions and disruptions. 

By ensuring mobile phones are kept away at recess and lunch times, students can interact with each other face-to-face, without the distractions and social pressures that mobile phones can cause.

We ask for the support of all our families, staff and students in continuing to support the implementation of this policy in our school. 

Further information 

Exceptions: For a small number of students with particular health and wellbeing needs, an exception to the policy may be granted. Please contact the Principal if you would like to discuss this.

Emergencies: In the event of an emergency or if you need to immediately contact your child, we ask that families contact the school office who will pass on a message as required. 

Parent support: The Mobile phone policy on the schools webpage provides links to resources for families to help them balance their children’s time using mobile phones.

If you have further questions, please contact the school office.

Year 9 Science

Brain Dissection

By Gaby Daly

While I and 4 others were out at the School for Student Leaders at Snowy River, the year 9s back at school participated in a brain dissection as part of the Brain and Central Nervous System unit.

When I learnt I had missed out I was very upset, and I was lucky enough that a teacher organised another session for me and the other students to do it when we got back to school. I was the only one present on the day, so Max Andrews joined me for a second time. 

We watched a video explaining what we were going to do that also pointed out the different sections of the brain. 

The brains we dissected were from sheep and one was fresh, and the other was preserved in a chemical. The fresh one was a little frozen which made it easy to cut and see the difference in colours of the brain matter. The preserved one was white and easy to cut up.

While the fresh one was still icy after being defrosted because of freezing. It made it a bit more difficult then the preserved one, but with the really sharp scalpel it made it much easier.

This was very educational, and I had lots of fun and I’m thankful I got the opportunity to have a go when returning.

Enrolments for 2025

Just a reminder that enrolments for Year 7 2025 have opened, and school tours are available.  Enrolments for other year levels are also available.  Please contact the school for more information.

Absences and Attendance

As the cooler weather brings an array of colds and flu’s, we know students may be getting sick and we prefer not to have contagious symptoms at school. If your child is unwell and not at school, please ensure you contact the office or year level coordinator, email keith.kerstjens@education.vic.gov.au, or alternatively, log into Compass and update the attendance note. yourself. 

In an ideal world we would have every student at school every day, but if that’s not possible, please inform the school if your child is going to be away for an extended time, so we can support your student with opportunities to catch up on missed work.

Zoo Update

Written by Elle

The frogs get fed with tongs. You have to be careful to hold the tongs in a way where they can’t grab onto the tongs and hurt themselves. The Green Tree Frogs like to eat wood roaches, in fact, they love them! They have been trained to be gentle. They have a really good environment and the croak when they are happy. There is a mister which rains on them twice a day, to give them moisture on their skin so they don’t dry out. They can jump very high and a big distance. 

Is SPARX Maths helping our students with maths?

Our goal at MNSC, is to give students every opportunity to pursue their career pathway of choice. No one pathway is better than another, but what we hate to see is students who have little choice or few options because their skills are not sufficient to undertake further training or education. There are very few jobs now for unskilled labour, and these are often part-time or casual. This type of work reduces life outcomes for our students. Parents who tell their children that they didn’t do well at school and/or never did any further training are probably setting their children up for failure. Most jobs now require us to be lifelong learners and many of the jobs that exist today, won’t exist in another 20 years’ time – our kids will need to be adaptable and learn new skills!

To enter TAFE, students are now required to sit a Literacy and Numeracy test to access the course of their choice. We have had examples of students not passing this test and being instructed to return to schooling. If a student has organised an apprenticeship with an employer, this can be incredibly disappointing for them. To help improve our students’ skills (especially post COVID), we have developed tools for students to improve, a major strategy which is proving to be highly successful is SPARX. Ultimately, and no surprise to most adults, practice tends to make us better! Both VCE and VM students now sit a literacy and numeracy test in the form of the General Achievement Test in Year 12. Formerly only VCE students sat this test.

The SPARXS data is in!

The results are in, and we are pleased to report some amazing results for our hardworking students!

Our year 8’s have been undertaking their weekly homework tasks with SPARX for two years now, and not only have we seen growth each year, we have made massive gains against the National Standard as can be seen below.

At the start of year 7 2022, our students PAT Maths Adaptive Test - Median Score was well below the National Standard. 

By the end of semester 2 2022, the students had made some great improvements, 2.9 vs the National Standard improvement of 2.7.

This year was even better! A massive 4.2 improvement vs a 2.0 National Standard improvement.

Our students now almost at the National standard!

We expect students to improve each year, however to make significant gains against the National Standard is amazing.

This is great evidence that our SPARX MATHS Homework program that we value highly, is having a great effect on our students!

We have also seen similar gains by our year 9’s and year 7’s doing SPARX for the first time this year.

SPARX MATHS GOLD STANDARD - Tips for improving your SPARX submissions

FOR STUDENTS

• Start you work early in the weekly cycle, the new homework task is released early Saturday morning. Try to make a start over the weekend.
• Complete as much as you can early in the week, so you can seek help with tricky questions through you teacher.
• Don’t just write your answer for bookwork checks. The intention of SPARX is for you to write all of your working and the answer. There is great evidence that writing helps to cement neural pathways in your brain.
• Finally, submit your 1 hour of homework BEFORE Friday’s 7pm deadline, and feel proud of your organisation and determination and importantly enhanced understanding of Maths!

FOR OUR PARENTS

Thank you for your support. Keep encouraging your child to complete their SPARXs Maths Homework task each week. You will be aware of the progress email you receive each week detailing your child’s progress. Thank you, you are making a difference.

XSEL @ MNSC  | Gratitude

Working on gratitude helps us to be thankful and appreciate what we have in our lives, rather than focusing on what we don’t have or what we want. When we practise being grateful, we start to scan the world to look for positives – this only takes 21 days! Practising gratitude every day increases our levels of energy, helps us to feel happier and more focused, determined and optimistic. It even helps us have a better sleep, lowers levels of anxiety and depression and we are less likely to get sick. So many benefits – let’s all try to be grateful for the things and people in our lives every day!

Whole Family Activity:  Gratitude Scavenger Hunt

As a family create a scavenger hunt list of things that make you happy or you are grateful for, you can make your own list or use the examples below:

• Something that makes you happy
• Something you love to smell
• Something you enjoy looking at
• Something that is your favourite colour
• Something you like in nature
• Something that is useful for you

Each member of the family uses the list, and has to find as many things as they can.You can hunt for things inside or outside, or both. You can hunt for real things, or you can also do this using magazines or pictures from the internet.

After a set amount of time hunting, come back together, have a look at what each person collected and let them explain why they are grateful for each item.

Family Habit Builder:

Every night at dinner, have each person talk about their favourite thing about that day.

And check out TRP@HOME ; a place filled with inspiration and activities for the whole family, to help improve your wellbeing and build resilience.