Secondary News 

Humanities

Year 12s:

On Friday, the Year 12 students travelled to Horsham to engage and participate in lectures presented by Ross Huggard. These revision lectures focused on preparing us for our final examination. We had a great day out where we learnt a lot and are feeling ready to engage in exam revision. During our break between lectures, we went bowling. Although some of us wish we had bumpers, Dash came away as the champion. Best of luck to the Year 12s as they commence examination revision. 

Miss Hardwick

Year 11s: 

"This term we have been studying our set text 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' We have explored a range of themes including racism, prejudice, and injustice. We have been completing a lot of practice tasks to expand our textual knowledge on the novel to better ourselves for our future assessments. We have also spent some time reading with the F/1s, along with exploring our own texts."

Em, Mollie, Jess and Ruby

"In English we have been having a set plan for each week, on Monday we have been analysing newspapers looking at the structure of the articles. We have also been comparing opinions and facts. We have also started our passion projects where we all get to choose a focus on how we can help improve our community. I am focused on how I can increase the population of Red Tail Black cockatoos by teaching the community about then and I am also going to plant some stringy bark trees. We have also writing a movie review on Rabbit Proof Fence."   

Isabel 

"During English we have been doing an analysis on newspapers and focusing on the who, what, when, where why and how for when we’re getting information about the article we have chosen to write about. While we do the small write up about the newspaper, we must work on the structure of how an article is written and the components of said article. 

During English we have been doing a passion project about a hobby/something about what you like, and we work on this project about 20% of the class time. When doing the passion project, we must get information/discuss on what you’re doing.

And we have written about the Rabbit Proof Fence and, looking at the stolen generation and writing a report about it."

Ki Brie

"This term in English we have been focusing on a very big selection of many different things such as learning about movie reviews and writing movie reviews on the Rabbit Proof Fence which is about 3 Aboriginal girls getting taken away from their family's and put into camps in the 1930s. We also do a newspaper analysis every Monday and also work also on the passion projects."

 Ruby Caldow 

"This term Mr Frost has taught us how to write a movie review, passion projects and newspaper analysis. For our passion projects we have been planning a project that we are passionate about, mine is about improving junior football players in the West Wimmera. The passion project takes up  20% of our English class time. Our movie that we are focusing on this term is called Rabbit Proof Fence made in 2002 directed by Phillip Noyce. It's about three aboriginal girls that get taken from their mothers to a mission in Moore River. For the Newspaper Analysis every Monday morning we analyse a newspaper article and we have to find an interesting article, then we get a task that we have to do eg, Find 10 words that you don't understand."

 Levi Linto 

"In English this term we have been focusing on movie called the rabbit proof fence. The rabbit proof fence is about 3 Aboriginal girls who got taken from the mothers. We are now writing a movie review on the movie. Every Monday we all get a newspaper and find a paragraph that interests us the write about in in our books. We have also been doing a passion project for 20% of our class time, for mine I am showing the steps of how to train a horse and the problems you may come across."

 Eliza McDonnell

"This term Mr Frost has been getting us to work on our passion projects and I decided to choose Model Trains and British Railways. My main goal for this is to not only teach people about model trains and British railways but to try and get more people into the model railway community. Something else that has come into production is a short film series using my G.W.R. 14xx Auto tank in which has been named Oliver, A small G.W.R. 4-wheel coach named Isabella and a G.W.R. 20T brake van named Toad who just to be different has a monocle. The show will be highly inspired by “Tugs” and the early “Thomas the tank engine and friends’ episodes. I have been really enjoying the work we do on our passion projects as it allows us to do work we enjoy and so other people can learn about our interests."                                                                Callum Sambell

Year 10 Humanities – Geography

The Year 10s have been examining the environmental impacts humans have on the planet this term. They chose an environmental issue to explore (pollution, coral bleaching), and presented ways that the issue may be resolved in the future. The Year 10s also researched how cities and countries have created new land into the oceans (like Venice, Amsterdam and Dubai and explained the positive and negative effects of changing the coastal landscapes on the environment.

Mr Irvin

Year 9 Humanities – Geography

In Geography this term the Year 9s have researched how climate change is affecting their environment. They have seen how changing the flow of the wetlands into Lake Wallace has created environmental issues. The students discussed what can be done to limit or reverse these negative changes. The Year 9s have also imagined how the world may look in 2050 as technology advances at a fast rate and how that may affect farming, tourism and the way we live our lives into the future.

Mr Irvin

Year 8 Humanities – Geography

The Year 8s have explored tectonic plates and how our earth is constantly changing through earthquakes and volcanoes. Each student has researched a mountain range to explain how it came to be and what it is made of and how animals and humans use and live in the habitat. Linking their studies to their XP learning the students have explained contour lines and how different styles of maps demonstrate different types of geographical features.

Mr Irvin

Year 7 English

In Year 7 English, we have been hard at work enhancing our knowledge of our text ‘The War the Saved my Life’ by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, which as been our class study text for this term. 

Earlier in August we were so lucky to have Cheryl LeBrun, who has been part of our community through relief teaching in the school and the Big Childcare program come and talk to us about what it is like to live with a disability. It was so insightful to hear from Cheryl and her positivity was infectious. She told us all about her life and the decisions she had to make with choosing to have her leg amputated so that she was no longer in pain. She has represented Australia at the Paralympics and Commonwealth Games and hasn’t let her disability stop her from doing some amazing things. She is very courageous and we sincerely thank her for coming to talk to us about her experiences. 

The protagonist in our text, Ada, was born with a clubfoot, so this was a fantastic connection to make with real life and being able to speak with Cheryl and ask her questions allowed us to gain more insight into what it would be like. 

To celebrate Book Week in Year 7 English, we read a story called ‘A Perfect Pig’ by Katrin Dreiling and then made our own “perfect pigs” out of pink playdough. We had pigs of all shapes and sizes, with our own artistic flair, but everyone had fun with the activity and it was fun to participate in the Book Week fun.

Mrs Altmann

Year 7 Humanities

Did you know that only 1% of ancient Egyptians could read and write? These lucky few were called Scribes and they were valued very highly in society. The writing they used was called hieroglyphics and consisted of over 750 different pictures to represent words. 

We have been studying ancient Egypt and have learnt so much about a lot of different elements from religion, daily life, food, gods, the value of animals, amazing architecture and of course the Pharaohs, including the most famous Pharoah, Tutankhamun. He is still so highly regarded because he ruled when he was so young (9 years old until he was 19 years old), but his tomb was the only one still intact when discovered in 1922. It contained over 5000 artefacts from his life and times, which have been invaluable for historians and there was an abundance of gold and precious jewels throughout, including 110kg of solid gold in one of his coffins alone. 

Egyptians rely so heavily on the Nile for their water, for the flooding and nutrients it provided on the flood plains and even for things like trade between cities. Their lives are very different to what we experience, as the climate is so hot and dry, but they have been crucial in the development of what we know today. 

It has been fascinating learning about such an old civilisation and the ways that they influenced the modern world. 

Mrs Altmann

Year 9 English

Our study text this term is ‘A New Kind of Dreaming’ by Anthony Eaton. We have been busy reading the text and better understanding the characters and big ideas throughout. We are at the point where there is a lot of suspense in the text and the events have us wondering what is going to happen to our main character, Jamie, and his friend Cameron. Many of the students reading the text have found that they have not been able to put their books down until they have finished reading to the end of the text, due to the thrilling events that are taking place – this is a great thing for English and makes Mrs Altmann very happy!

In recent weeks we have been busy writing a creative piece pretending we are a character from the text and using the events of the text to drive what we might be thinking or feeling as this particular character. This has been good to get our creativity flowing and it has been fun to let our imagination run a little wild.  

Mrs Altmann

Year 10 English

Our study of the key idea of Identity and Belonging has allowed us to explore the three core text types of imaginative, persuasive and expository writing. We have been busy producing our own written texts for the various forms that highlight our understanding of our film text ‘Skin’, directed by Anthony Fabian, which is about one woman’s struggle in Apartheid South Africa. Sandra looks like she has coloured skin, but she has two white parents. This makes it hard for her to live and find her place in a segregated society and trying to imagine her struggles has been the focus for the core of our study. 

We are moving into looking at issues that we are facing as young people and how these impact on our identity and where or how we belong. 

Mrs Altmann