Junior School

Civics & Citizenship

During Term Four, the Year 8’s celebrated the end of their Civics and Citizenship unit in Humanities by hosting a class election.  Parties were formed based on shared interests and ideas among students, and each group worked together to develop a campaign. Every party needed a name, slogan, promotional video, and campaign speech outlining their key policies and ideas. Together, these elements aimed to persuade the class to vote for their party. 

It was fantastic to see the range of creative strategies and interesting policies each group came up with.  Everyone had carefully considered ways the school could be improved, and all the ideas were very well thought out and explained.  Before election day, students spent time forming their political groups and deciding what issues they wanted to advocate for within the Academy.  Each group developed a set of policies and created strong campaigns to convince the class to vote for them.  On election day, all the groups worked hard in hopes of their party winning.  Various techniques and strategies were used, even including a small amount of vote buying and friendly competition between groups! 

The class also applied ideas from the Civics unit, such as using the preferential voting system that they had recently learned about.  It was an extremely close election, with just a few votes determining the final result.  In the end, however, 67 Academy were crowned the winning party in 8 Red.

Overall, the class election was a great way to conclude the unit.  It gave students a chance to put their Civics knowledge into practice and express their opinions on what changes they would like to see around the school.

Willa Cusick - 8 Red

Mr Alan Tomassini

Humanities Learning Leader

Getting Creative with Sphero BOLTs!

This term, our Year 8 students have been exploring the exciting world of coding through the use of Sphero BOLTs — small, programmable robots that can move, light up and even communicate with one another.

Armed with iPads and plenty of imagination, the girls have been learning to code movement, lights and sound, testing their problem-solving and teamwork skills along the way.   What started as simple programming challenges quickly evolved into creative experiments — including obstacle courses, races, and even dramatic stunts that saw some “poor Spheros” being launched through flames (thankfully, paper flames only!)

The energy and enthusiasm in the classroom have been contagious, with students showing persistence, collaboration, and a real flair for innovation.  It’s been wonderful to see how coding can spark both creativity and critical thinking — essential skills for our future innovators!

Dr Bryce Dermody

Teacher