Principal's Blog

Dear Parents, Carers, Students, Staff and Friends of Derinya,

LEGO LEAGUE

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the FIRST Lego League tournament at Swinburne University with an amazing group of 15 of our senior Derinya students. FIRST stands for 'For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology'. The Lego League has been going for nearly twenty years but this is our first year competing in the tournament.

Each year a new theme is presented to schools, with the theme in 2023 being called 'Masterpiece' and focusing on the arts.

There are two major components of the FLL that all teams must fulfil. Firstly, teams are required to build a Lego robot (using the Lego Spike robotics kit) and design it in such a way that the team can program it to complete a series of missions in a set amount of time. These missions are completed on a large 2m x 1m game board under the watchful eyes of the referees and the other competing schools. The other component is the 'Innovation Project' which requires teams to devise a solution to a common problem. This years problem revolved around kids and the sharing of their hobbies and interests with their friends and families. Teams had to devise new and innovative ways to share their interests.

The event day itself was a great experience and the culmination of months of work our students put in in preparation. There was so much enthusiasm and encouragement amongst all the participants and the Derinya kids did us all proud, displaying gracious professionalism (a core value of FLL) when things didn't go as planned. Their resilience in the face of heated competition was on full display. Our three teams - Bricktastic, Mixed Brix and the Space Chickens, performed amazingly, creating robots that competed at a high level throughout the rounds. 

All three teams had presentations prepared to deliver to a panel of judges, detailing their ideas for the Innovation Project. On top of this, they were required to present to the panel their competition robot and talk about the process involved in the building and programming of it. Well done to all involved!

HUMAN POWERED VEHICLE (HPV)

Our three HPV teams are up in Maryborough finishing up their race today, with each team having ridden around 400km at this stage. They’ve worked so hard to get to this point and we hear they are doing us very proud. All presentations were completed over the last couple of days and Mr. Stevens has reported that all teams did an amazing job with their presentations. We look forward to hearing from Miss Cruse and the Pink Panthers, the Speedy Smurfs and the Green Machine when they make it back to Derinya.

GARDEN NEWS

Derinya’s Indigenous Garden has won an award!  On Thursday 23th November, the Robertson and Schroder families along with Margrit (our beautiful Crossing Supervisor) attended the Victorian Schools Garden Award Presentation Ceremony at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, on behalf of the Derinya community. We are so pleased to announce that the D.I.G. won the award of 'Most Engaging Garden for Play' award and was presented by Jane Edmonson from Gardening Australia.  As part of the award, the school received $1000 prize money which will be put towards stage 2 of the garden.

Also, in D.I.G. news, over the last few weeks, the Grade 6 students from the ‘Creative Challenge’ group have been working to create a fence mural to be displayed in the Garden. Each student received a template and were invited to research and draw their own design that would be suitable for school grounds. There were 17 children who submitted their design for voting by the Creative Students, and the top 4 designs were then voted on by the Grade 6 cohort. Two designs were tied after all of those votes, so it then went to leadership teachers - which also ended in a tied vote. It was decided that instead of one mural, the students could make two as the votes could not be split! 

Creative Challenge students designed, stencilled, painted, outlined and assisting with the installation of these murals which was so wonderful to see. A big congratulations must go to Olive S and Joe S who’s designs are now on display along the fence line on the block. We are so proud of these students and what they have achieved and loved being a part of this legacy they will leave behind as they graduate in a few weeks time.

Stuart Charles

Assistant Principal