BYTES

It’s been a huge 2017 in BYTES.

To finish the year, Year 9 students are undertaking the “Community” module in the BYTES program.

Part of Community is the brand new component of “BYTES LYF”. Past BYTES students had been asked what they would like to see added to the BYTES curriculum and they showed a desire to learn practical life skills - enter the BYTES staff who developed a series of short lessons to teach students basic life skills.

Year 9 students spent a week building their ability to change a car tyre and perform general maintenance, dance a waltz, write a resume, create a budget, demonstrate table manners and etiquette and think critically about health and nutrition of food.

Mr Lynch educationally removes the second left foot from a group of students.

A group of diligent BYTES students giving Mr Farthing’s car a much needed once-over.

Community finishes with BYTES Decides - a BYTES tradition that sees the students engage with our electoral system. Each BYTES class created their own political party, spent a number of periods researching and developing policies that influence both the nation and the school and created election materials including a campaign ad and the always popular party badges.

BYTES Decides culminated on election day with speeches from each of the party leaders including one amazing political song (below)

and a full preferential election (below)

with students voting in electorates of the month of their birth. In both BYTES A and BYTES B, we ended with a hung parliament (no one party had a majority) so two fascinating rounds of leaders negotiations followed to form government and claim the ultimate reward of POWER (a pizza lunch on the last day of term).

A big thank you to all BYTES staff for their hard work and commitment throughout the year and in Community - a wonderful team to work with.

David Machin

BYTES Co-ordinator