Secondary School News

7C’s Performance of Joan of Arc

Last term, Steiner class 7C embodied the Middle Ages in the performance of the class play, Joan of Arc. The play told the heroic tale of Joan, a young teen, who received a vision of three angels who urged her to fight and defend France in the Hundred Year’s War against England. Against all odds, Joan received armour and led the French army to victory. Despite the win, Joan was eventually tried for witchcraft and burnt at the stake; a sad end for a play that was quite a delight to rehearse and perform.

The class had only four weeks to memorise their lines, develop their acting, and block each scene. Although there were plenty of drama games and laughter, the rehearsals were a lot of effort. We discussed the many real life skills that theatre allows us to develop, like our time management, organisation, oral presentation, and resilience – the show must go on! And it did.

Performance day came quickly and we were tirelessly in the theatre. The students took ownership over every element of the play, on-stage and off. Everyone had a speaking role, but there were plenty of other roles accounted for: costume, set and prop directors, music, lighting and sound, and communications and PR. The daytime dress rehearsal was a big success and 7C offered a strong performance to their year 7 and year 8 audience members. However, the nerves arose in the evening when family and friends arrived for the final performance. Sometimes the time between performances is the hardest part. Nevertheless, the students did their best and it showed in a fantastic final performance of Joan of Arc. It was a pleasure to work with the class on this Main Lesson and I’m incredibly proud of their effort. They made it a wonderful experience for everyone.

MYP Showcase of Student Learning

Our first official MYP Showcase occurred and it was a wonderful time to recognise and celebrate our students’ achievements. Families were able to complete a gallery walk through the new Year 7 Learning Area to see student work displays for each subject with time to converse with teachers. There was also a special drama performance where some very talented students were able to exhibit their drama skills! This event beautifully captured the efforts of our foundation MYP students , and clearly highlighted the benefits of an inquiry approach to learning with a focus on creative and critical thinking. Thank you to all families for attending and supporting the programme. Well done Year 7!

Teachers as life-long learners - MYP Professional Learning Day

Last term all Year 7-10 teachers undertook a full day of MYP Professional Learning: Developing the MYP. IB educators, Guang Wu and Kumar S, visited the school and delivered a range of sessions to further develop our knowledge and conceptual understandings of the programme; this involved exploring the fundamental principles of learning in an IB programme, subject objectives and qualities of a learner-centred and inquiry classroom. This was an important next step in our MYP journey and valuable time to collectively consider our school culture, and enhance our teaching and learning practices.

City Excursion

Year 7 MYP students visited Dymocks bookstore in the city and chose a book from the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) shortlist for personal reading.The CBCA was founded in 1944 with six different categories and has the objective of ‘enriching young lives through Australian stories’. It was wonderful to see students find excitement in visiting a bookstore and reading for pleasure. This learning activity provided an opportunity for students to become familiar with a range of Australian authors while also developing their ability to read independently. Following the visit to the bookstore, we stopped at the State Library for a brief self-guided tour.

English Events

Author Visit

Eva Collins visited our College to speak to Year 10 students and shared a personal and informative account of her experiences of immigrating to Australia as a child and growing up in a new and different country. She read key poems from the verse novel ‘Ask no Questions’ with humour and reflection. It was clearly evident how very observant Eva is and the role this plays in her story-telling; through highlighting what she saw, heard and felt amid her experiences, vivid descriptions were created for students. Eva opened the session up for question time and was able to really engage with students with several choosing to stay back and share their own experiences. Eva provided a real context to the text which allowed students to develop a deeper understanding of the social and historical period. I am looking forward to inviting Eva back next year. A talented writer of a wonderful text with important central ideas for secondary school students!

Student feedback and reflections below:

“I like how she read out bits of the poem and explained them which really changed my interpretation of her work.”
“She seemed to want to be there telling us about her stories. That made the presentation engaging. When we asked her questions, she didn’t just give us a straight answer and move on. She elaborated on her answers and used lots of anecdotes in turn.”
“It was interesting when she gave us insight on the experience behind her writing.”
“I liked how she shared memories of her childhood to make us experience what her life was like before and after she moved.”
“I thought she was a lovely woman and had a valuable and engaging life story. I thought her animation was creative and reflected how innocent she was growing up in a communist nation. I thought her story was a very sad one and she may have laughed about it to us but I think she was inspirational.”

Public Speaking Competition

Ashanti Joy and Aish Eastwood participated in the Ainger Peck Public Speaking Award which is a public speaking competition conducted by the Rotary Club of Richmond. The competition promotes and enhances communication, and helps develop the art of public speaking. It gives each student an opportunity to develop their speaking skills by choosing a topic of their choice and presenting it before an unfamiliar audience. The speakers then get the benefit of constructive feedback from an experienced adjudication panel. I was fortunate enough to attend and hear Ashanti speak about the history and joys of Zines, and Aish shared her point of view about Standardised Testing in schools - both did a wonderful job representing our college and achieved personal goals!

MYP - Language and Literature

The MYP encourages teachers to provide opportunities for students to be able to create work that has a specific - real - audience and a community connection. Language and Literature students recently presented their Learning Task (created advert for the upcoming Swing into Spring event) to the College Principal; this involved explaining the linguistic and stylistic choices made to create their advert. These adverts will be used to promote the event throughout this term.

Lori Michael

Teaching and Learning Lead Teacher, MYP & English Coordinator

Djurite Year 10 Camp, February

In term one, students in year ten Outdoor Education spent five days exploring the climbing mecca of Durrite / Mt Arapiles and surrounds. After a day of driving and setting up camp in Tooan State Park, students were split into two groups, with one introduced to rock climbing and abseiling at popular crag “Bushrangers Bluff” and the other walking a circuit track around the mountain. Hot and windy conditions increased the fire danger in the park mid week. With the group adapting to these changing conditions, the Horsham caravan park became home base for the remainder of the trip. Swimming in the river was a particular highlight in Horsham, and as conditions improved, the team returned to another day of climbing and abseiling on Thursday. The group banded together for an early start on the final day, carrying water drums uphill in the dark to water some parched banksia seedlings for the Friends of Arapiles crag care group, before a well deserved sunrise breakfast stop and trundle back to Collingwood with the climbing stoke well and truly fueled.

The Great Book Swap 2024

Wednesday 21st and Thursday 22nd of August 2024

in the Library.

PLEASE DONATE BOOKS

Collingwood College Library is going to host the Great Book Swap to support the Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) vision to lift literacy levels and instil a lifelong love of reading in students in remote communities.

We have raised more than $6000 in the past few years and we are doing it again.

Please donate books (bring the books to the library before 21st of August).

Come with the gold coin donation on the day - one coin for one book. Everyone’s invited.

Thank you

Alina

INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE (updated 15 March) - Contact Person - Steve Wu

Please click on the attachment below to see a list of Stringed instruments for sale. If you

have an instrument for sale please email Steve at: fengchih.09@gmail.com

List of instruments for sale - 2 Jun 2024 (2).pdf

COLLINGWOOD COLLEGE ON FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM

Collingwood College is online! Feel free to follow us on:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/collingwood.college/ and like us on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/collingwood.vic.edu.au/ to keep up to date with everything that our school has to offer our students and the community.