Middle School
Victorian High-Ability Program
Virtual School Victoria developed and delivered the Victorian High Ability Program (VHAP), which includes a 10-week online course in Mathematics and English for Year 7 and 8 students across Victoria. At the end of last year and the start of this year, our students were lucky to be a part of and have the chance to enrich our learning in this beneficial program.
The English VHAP class consisted of a further study on dystopian elements and stories, exploring the ideas and techniques used in this style of writing. We had a look at the dystopian, novel, “Hive”, as well as other films such as “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent”. To show our new-found knowledge, we were given the opportunity to write our own dystopian short narratives, as a gratifying project to finish the course.
THE MASTERCLASS
After the completion of this course, students from multiple schools across Victoria, including Blackburn High School, Koonung Secondary College and Doncaster Secondary College gathered together at East Doncaster Secondary College for a productive VHAP masterclass. This one-day class was made to engage us students to share and reflect our experience and knowledge gained from VHAP with other like-minded peers.
As a part of the English Masterclass, students participated in a number of activities, including the analysis of more dystopian short stories such as, “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury, and “Brother to the Machine” by Richard Matheson.
This led to our final goal of publishing our very own anthology of combined dystopian stories that students have written during the VHAP English course. Each of us had a role to take part in creating our valued collection of dystopian creative texts.
Students participating in the Math Masterclass worked in small teams with students from other schools to undertake a series of mathematical challenges and games. Students then shared their thinking at the end of the day and won a range of prizes for their efforts.
Fiona Cowan
High-Ability Practice Leader