Junior School Report
What's Happening in Junior School
Elevate Sessions
During the last couple of weeks our students have had the opportunity to engage with a wonderful set of programs put together by the ever insightful company, Elevate.
Elevate is built on establishing great practices for students to achieve the highest results possible. Every year they provide students to achieve the highest results in all three VCE streams including the ATAR and Vocational Major streams. Elevate has been transforming the way study skills programs are run across Australia. Drawing upon over twenty years of research into the habits of the country’s top students, the workshops are aimed at developing student study techniques, increasing motivation, building confidence, and lifting student performance. Below is an outline of the session run with each of the year levels.
Year 7 - Study Skills
The Year 7 students had an opportunity to work on their study skills. Our students enter the college from different primary schools having experienced varying approaches to homework practices. To further support their transition we invite Elevate to provide our students a helping hand to support their organisational skills and schedule times to complete their homework and develop good study habits.
With so many classes and different teachers it can all become a little bit too much for some of our students in Term 1. The Study Skills session guided the students through what the best of the best have done over the course of their six years at school and how they achieved the best outcomes.
Many of our Year 7 students walked out of that session with a new approach or strategy to getting a handle on their homework.
Year 8 - Time Management
Similar to our Year 7 students, our Year 8 students are starting to get a level of homework that they perhaps have never seen before plus all of their extra-curricular activities are starting to build up.
The question becomes for a lot of these students, where do I find the time? This session is designed to help our students timetable their lives, prioritise the activities that they care about most while also allowing time for the things they care a little bit less about (homework normally fits in here).
The session was run in two sections and the outcome was all of the Year 8 students had a timetable that they could take home with a schedule of their weekly activities outside of school and the time they could put aside for study and homework. By conducting sessions each year, students were able to reflect on and build upon the strategies they had learnt the year before.
Year 9 - Memory and Mnemonics
Finally, our Year 9 students were given the opportunity to explore what actually makes our memory work the way that it does, and to play with a few mnemonic tricks to help them trick their brains into remembering more things.
This session was designed to give students a better understanding of their own brains and the way that they work when remembering key details.
Our students left this session with a much better understanding of their own brains and with many techniques they could use to help remember more of what is going in class and outside of class.
Since the last newsletter, Junior School been running very smoothly. It’s great to see a lot of the Year 7 students making friends with not only other Year 7 students but students from other year levels as well. The community culture at Scoresby is definitely benefitting from the great attitudes that the students bring in each and every day.
Mr Daniel Croft
Head of Junior School
Victorian High Achievers Program
At Scoresby Secondary College, our high achieving students are supported and extended by their involvement in the Victorian High Achievers Program (VHAP).
VHAP programs run each term for Maths and English. In term one, some of our top achieving students Rayd Rachman, Jordan Tram and Ethan Vi participated in the Maths extension program which is run via Webex sessions and led by a Maths specialist from the Department Education (DE). Other schools from the local area participate, so students enjoy the opportunity to share their learning and ideas with like-minded peers. This term the VHAP learning focus was on abstract mathematical strategies.
Here are some of our student reflections on the program:
“It was interesting to cover new concepts that I had never heard of before” - Jordan Tran
“I liked working collaboratively in our special office space with my peers" - Rayd Rachman and Ethan Vi
Year 9 Humanities
In Year 9 Humanities, students are learning about global food production and how it impacts on food security.
Students investigated the origin of common household food items sold in Australia. In these photos, students are surprised to discover that much of the food they consume is not grown locally and is imported from foreign countries.
For example, Bella’s baked beans: New Zealand, Sammi’s bell peppers: Peru, Adam’s noodles: Malaysia and Jett’s tuna was from the Philippines.
Congratulations also to Adam Du, Abigail Tan and Sammi Willems for their excellent results in CAT1.
Ms Kathryn Watt
English and Humanities Teacher
High Achievers Leader
Blue Edge
This term a select few of our Year 8 students and Year 9 students participated in a program called Blue Edge every Thursday and Friday morning. This program is run with Blue Light, Victoria Police and EACH (Community Health Service) to address topics including communication, healthy decision making, accessing support and a fun day with the police.
It has been an awesome program to be a part of with each week running a 30-minute Personal Training session with a local Personal Trainer, Ozzie, followed by a shared meal which was often a box consisting of cereal, fruit cup and juice. Other lessons I would cook up pancakes or toast for the students to enjoy. After the shared meal, the students would participate in a workshop run by the facilitator Paris. Each week was a different session that would supply the student’s helpful tools to use in their everyday life.
A member of the local Police joined the group every session. Johnny being a regular member from Knox Police to attend the sessions. The students enjoyed having a laugh with him and he would always enjoy working with the students.
Every student was supplied with a Blue Edge shirt which they proudly wore with all adults in the program, fostering a sense of community wand postive relationships.
On the last day of term, the students went on a Team Day to Mt Evelyn YMCA Camp and participated in activities such as hut building, nature walk, giant swing and team building. The day was a great finale to the program for the students to spend the time together with the Blue Edge team.
I look forward to sharing more about the final day of the program next term.
Miss Shianne Marsal
Health andPhysical Education Teacher