Senior Secondary

In the Business of Flourishing

What do dad and kid sized t-shirts, homemade chocolate brownies and personalised giant cookies have in common?

They are all products being sold by the Year 11 Business class, for the upcoming MECS Father’s Day Stall on Friday 30 August!

To prepare for this event, the Business Management students ran a focus group with our primary aged students to understand their target market, learned how to write a business plan to ascertain how many products they will have to sell to make a profit, and had to pitch their business ideas to a ‘Shark Tank’ to refine their marketing and CSR (corporate social responsibility) strategies. We are very grateful for the panel, composed of Loey Riches, Grace Sketcher, Rob Lichtendonk and Jocey Bouma, for taking time to share words of support, expertise, and enthusiasm with the class.

If you’re stuck for a Father’s Day gift this year, come down to the Understory and support the Business class.

Sharon Payze

Year 11 Business Management Teacher

Literacy For Advocacy  

#LovingLiteracy #LearningAboutLiteracy #LiteracyForAdvocacy

When we discourage students from using their phones at school, what place does hashtags have in the classroom? I recently spent a period with our Year 12 VCE-VM students unpacking how there are various ways you can advocate for a cause, social media being one of them.  

I have a background in social media management, having worked with organisations promoting sustainable fashion and road safety as well as having used social media at a personal level for self-advocacy. It was great to chat with students about how they could use social media for good. The students were preparing for their upcoming excursion to the TAC ‘Road to Zero’ education centre, so it was helpful to have a look at the different digital campaigns the TAC have employed on social media. Instagram was launched when I was starting high school and it has significantly evolved from a place to post images of sunsets and brunch to a platform where organisations, businesses and individuals can generate awareness, fundraising and income. We’ve also seen the introduction of many more social media platforms in that time too! 

The VCE-VM Literacy unit aims to equip students with the skills required to apply their knowledge to real life scenarios and workplaces. As a class, we looked at how different books, fiction and non-fiction advocate for certain groups of people or causes and discussed which TV shows & movies they’d seen recently that had themes of advocacy in them.  

As their unit challenges them to create a few social media posts advocating for a cause they’re interested in, I left them with five tips on how to create a piece of content that will engage their audience to respond and a framework for using Chat-GPT to support them.  

1. Stop the scroll – make the post eye catching and use a hook or sizzling start in your caption or at the start of your video. 
2. Spelling and grammar – although most social media platforms are primarily visual platforms, it is still important to use correct spelling and grammar! Use Chat GPT or Grammarly to double check these.  
3. Use hashtags – whether hashtags really increase your audience is widely debated but while the debate is ongoing, there is no harm in using them. Use a variety & regularly change them. Chat GPT can help you create a bank of hashtags relevant to your cause. 
4. Identify who your audience is – what interests do they have? How old are they? Will they understand the language or cultural references you’re making in your post? If you say ‘slay’ or ‘skibbidi’ in your caption but your target audience is anyone over 18, they probably won’t understand your message. 
5. Create diverse content that will capture different tiers of your audience BUT also ensure that you have a consistent brand look & voice and post consistently.  

When social media first began to pick up some speed, the thought that people would be employed full time to create content, analyse trends and construct paid advertisement using it was a far-fetched idea. 

It was awesome to spend time with students who intuitively use social media and may go on to use it for their future employers or to increase their own businesses digital presence. Our VCE-VM students futures look as bright as the sunset pictures we all love to post on social media!

Grace Sketcher 

Teaching & Learning Executive Assistant, VASS, VCE Exam Coordinator

Literacy for Advocacy Excursion

In our world we use literacy of many different forms to help advocate for our community, for promotion, and ourselves. In Unit 4 Literacy, the Year 12s went to the Melbourne Museum on 8th August and did a schools program about Road Safety. The program was called ‘Road to Zero’, referring to the goal that Victoria has of reducing the road toll to zero by 2050. Many students have been gaining their driver’s license and have their own cars, so this message is paramount to the Year 12s and their peers.

The students engaged in discussion about how to effectively use advertising videos to influence a key audience, and watched some example ads. They then were able to create their own campaign ads in small groups, beginning with the target audience and key message they wanted to spread. These ads were very fun to make, using interactive screens, video clips, and music to create a distinctive ad. We will watch these back at school and be able to discuss what techniques were used for each group.

At the end we had some time to enjoy the museum and consider more broadly how places like museums advocate for learning and understanding. It was a great day of learning outside the classroom.

Nicky Joiner

VCE-VM Coordinator & Secondary Teacher

VCE PE Excursion

On Monday 29 July the Unit 3 & 4 Physical Education class visited Genesis gym in Lilydale for a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) training session using stationary bikes. 

This formed part of the students’ Unit 4 studies on how to implement an effective training program. Students participated in a range of training methods in a series of practical classes and completed a reflective folio on their experiences. The HIIT session at Genesis gym involved students completing a conditioning phase of 10 reps of 1 minute high intensity intervals at around 90% max HR, followed by 1 minute active recovery. The session was hard work with the students really pushing themselves to get the most out of the session.  

A big thanks to Beaux Glenn, the Manager of Genesis gym, for running such a great session for the PE class.  

Emma Tresidder

VCE Coordinator & Secondary Teacher