Year 7-9 Sector
AP News
Dear Parents and Carers,
The students are working through the last month of completing their teaching and learning programs, concluding for the most part with Key Learning Area Exams, this is always a busy time for students completing their curriculum requirements and studying. Just a reminder that during this time we encourage students to attend study club each Wednesday night to receive the extra support for their studies. Following this it will be time to celebrate our learning and finish the year with a series of events and activities.
Among the activities, alternative programs and Step-Up, the year 7 and 8 students head off to Adventure Park Geelong. The year 9 students will complete transition programs at their respective senior colleges then have a week of activities, culminating in their Graduation.
I would like to remind and welcome parents to our ‘7-9 Sector Assembly’ at 2:15pm on Thursday the 15th of November. The focus of the assembly will be on Resilience while also celebrating individual student excellence.
I would also like to invite all Grade 6 parents to the ‘Year 7 2019 Information Evening’ on Thursday the 15th of November. If you are unable to make it please contact me at the college and I can share any information electronically.
Thank you as always for your support of the kids.
Michael Heyne
Assistant Principal
Year 7 News
Firstly we’d like to congratulate the year 7 girl’s volleyball, boy’s basketball and girl’s table tennis teams for making it to the next stage of the finals for interschool sports. It was a big effort and great to see so many talented athletes.
This term in Math we have been learning ratios and started our unit on transformation. In Science, we have been making Rube Goldberg contraptions using simple machines, and we have just finished our own science expo projects, which were all on display on Tuesday night’s annual Science expo. Everyone put in a lot of effort to present some amazing investigations and experiments. In English we have been focusing on personal identity through the characters of the movie Wreck-it-Ralph. And in Economics, we have been learning about jobs and careers and what qualifications are required in order to get specific jobs. Lastly, in PE we have been learning about water safety.
This has been heaps of fun as we have just started a 3-week long swimming program, where we are learning about water danger statistics, and dangers of water. We have been practicing types of safe entries, how to perform rescue techniques, and which techniques are suitable for the condition of the person being rescued. A big thanks to all of our teachers for making our subjects as fun as possible.
As we said earlier, this will be a very busy term for the year 7s and there are a lot of things coming up. On Tuesday 23rd of October, we had Brookside’s annual Science expo. There were a large amount of creative and original experiments on the day. A more detailed report on this day will be coming up soon, but we’d like to give a big thanks to Mr Clark and the other science teachers for holding this event and setting up all of the projects. It was an awesome night!
In week 8, we had our second round of exam revision before our semester two Math and English exams. These exams will include everything from terms 3 and 4. Exams will start on the following week (week 9).
In week 10 we will have our 7 to 8 step up day. This is a day where we will be stepping into the shoes of a year 8 student, to learn what the responsibilities and challenges will be for next year. Also in week 10 is Brookside summer fest. This is an event to celebrate everything Brookside related, with music, food and fun games for our community.
Our last week of school is week 11. To celebrate all of the hard work we have done this year, we will be going to Adventure Park in Geelong. We are all super eager for this day and cannot wait for all the fun that awaits. Mr Hermanson has also promised to run a number of fun activities during this term, including a lip sync battle, graffiti wall competition and our last homeroom competition for the year ‘Soldiers and Medics’.
Thanks to all of our teachers for making year 7 so fun. We hope everyone has a great term 4 and enjoys all of the year 7 activities coming up!
Written by Rudyna S, Adriana C, Indianah A and Joanne K (7C)
Melbourne Zoo Excursion
On Thursday 8 November, the year 7 cohort went to the Melbourne zoo for a Science excursion. The teachers were Mr Hermansson, Miss Spain, Mr Finnigan, Miss Karras, Miss Salvadori, and Miss Warren. We all met on the basketball courts and got into six learning groups for the day. Then we jumped on the bus. When we arrived, we got off the bus and met at the giant Peppercorn tree in the centre of the zoo. Here we met Chris, one of the Melbourne zoo keepers. He led us into the seal viewing room and talked us through the day. We were all given lanyards that had a map of the zoo and the animals that we needed to visit and research.
The program for the day was called Call of the Wild, and we needed to classify animals and decide which ones were the most important to save. After our introduction, we got the chance to wander around the Zoo looking at different types of animals. We each had a dichotomous key to fill out, classifying 14 different animals of our choice. Partway through our walk we also got to do an educational visit where everyone got to touch a snake and lizard! Some of us were so scared we needed to leave the room, but others were brave and stayed. We were all able to see as many animals as we could, depending on how fast we walked! We saw everything from Giraffes and Elephants, to seals, butterflies and Bengal tigers. By the end of the day we were exhausted. It was a lot of walking!
We learnt that many animals have different characteristics which they use for defence, offence and other reasons. We also learnt that sadly, many animals are endangered and are in need of our help. Some of these endangered species include the Snow leopard, Asian elephant, Orang-utan and more.
We would like to thank the Melbourne Zoo staff and all our teachers for organising this event! It was a great day!
Written By Andre Santos (7B), Daniel Williamson (7B), Indianah Attard (7C) and Joanne Kloppenburg (7C).
Science Expo
On Tuesday the 23rd of October, Brookside’s annual science expo took place in the gymnasium after school.
It was a great opportunity for students to create their own experiments based on topics of their choice, and to collaborate with others using the scientific method. It was also a great opportunity to practice conducting fair tests to learn about new things and expand our science knowledge.
The expo was open for all students who are enrolled in Brookside from prep to year 9, and parents and families from the community were welcome to attend from 3:30pm to 6:00pm. It was great to see so many year 7s show off their hard work and present their findings and demonstrations!
Thanks to all of the science legends for their participation and for all their effort in putting projects and experiments together to make it such an amazing night! Please see the photos attached for some of our year 7 students and projects.
Written by Rudyna S (7C) and Shenora J (7A).
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Year 8 News
Humanities Update-Lisa Spain
The National History Challenge
For the first time this year, Brookside participated in the National History Challenge. The National History Challenge is an initiative by the Australian Government that is designed to allow students to be creative when investigating history. Since April, students worked hard on projects and essays that were about this year’s History Challenge theme of Turning Points.
A small number of students worked tirelessly during Study Clubs and their own time to complete their entries to the best of their abilities. When submissions closed on 31st of August, we had four complete projects to send away. Congratulations to the following students for completing their projects:
- Eliana S (5A) who wrote an essay about Martin Luther King
- Arya M-H (7E) who created a documentary about the Cuban Revolution
- Isabella S (9D) who wrote an essay about Michael Jackson’s influence on music
- Jonathan M (9E) who wrote an essay about the American Revolution
A special congratulations goes to Arya M-H and Isabella S who were selected as State Finalists for the challenge. Arya and Isabella spent a Sunday morning travelling out to Melbourne Grammar to present their finished projects to a
panel of judges and talk about what they learned through the project.
Unfortunately Arya and Isabella were not selected for the next stage of the competition but they have a lot to be proud of – being a state finalist is an amazing achievement!
Well done to those students who completed the National History Challenge.
Secondary Humanities Leader
Year 8 Medieval Games Incursion
On Friday 10 October, the year 8 had an incursion about medieval Europe. We had two people come teach us about the games that were played in medieval Europe. We had so much fun in our hour that we had. We learnt the different games that were played and why they were played. We saw that the games are every different for the games played today.
The games we play today are mostly all on online, but in those days they had no electricity. The games we tried were played by the people that would mostly work on the farms and lived just outside the kingdom. This was one of the only sources of entertainment they had. The games that we played were played with axes and can be every dangerous, so we didn’t us axes, we just used wood blocks. We had so much fun and everyone loved it. The day as filled with lots of laughter.
Millie S (8B)
Year 9 News
The year 9s are coming to the end of their time at Brookside and are keeping busy getting all their assessment tasks completed before their exams. To see current tasks to be working on, please ensure that you are checking Compass for due dates and resources to help with completing the work on time. Formal classes will conclude on the 7th of December – less than one month away!
From now until the end of term, the year 9s have a lot on! In week 8 (week starting the 26th November) students will be undergoing revision for Maths, English, Science and Humanities in preparation for their last lot of Brookside exams the following week.
In week 10 (the week starting 10th December), the year 9s attending Lakeview in 2019 are invited to the senior college for a three day transition. During this time, students will meet their new classes, teachers and become familiar with year 10 content. They will also be given holiday homework, but will be given the opportunity to complete this back at Brookside with teacher support.
To help assist with transition to Lakeview, Raj and the wellbeing team are taking a group of students to visit the senior college and meet with future coordinators before the official transition.
Finally, week 11 will be an activities week, culminating in the student-organised graduation on Thursday the 20th of December. Payment and consent for these events are up on Compass and need to be provided before December the 3rd.
We give our thanks to Seral Fehmi and the events elective students who have worked together to plan, organise and run the activities and events for the year 9s in their last week of school.
Other events to look forward to include the Young Warriors performance and 7-9 Sector assembly both being held on Thursday the 15th of November and the Brookside Summer Best Fest being held on Thursday the 13th of December. We would also like to reflect on the success of the year 9s’ experiments for the annual Science Expo. Congratulations to those who got to see the end product of their hard work and thank you to Patrick Clark, Michelle Krell and Ryan Peceli who helped support the students every step of the way while also running the expo. The year 9 students have had a massive impact on all the events being held and we have loved seeing their involvement.
We would finally like to pass on our congratulations to all year 9 students that were successful in obtaining a place in the AFL and Soccer Programs and/or an Accelerated VCE Subject for next year. We are very proud of all our year 9s and their achievements so far, and we are very aware that this is only the beginning of some great things to come from this cohort.
Regards,
Rebecca Lucas, Grant Puxley and the year 9 team.
(Year 9 coordinators, 2018)
DOE & Event Electives-Morton Homestead
As part of Miss Krell’s Duke of Edinburgh elective’s Community Service component and Miss Fehmi’s Events elective, students have been meeting and engaging with Morton Homestead Community members every Wednesday for the past 3 weeks. During our visits, students have had the opportunity to get to know different members, hear real life stories and memories they treasure and are willing to share, laugh together and even share stories of our own.
Last week Morton Homestead visited Brookside College. Year 9 students provided morning tea, including coffees, tea, hot chocolate and cakes all made on premises, by students in the HOL Café. These cakes and coffees were received with smiles and appreciation and compliments were given to those students who made delicious treats. To close our visit with Morton Homestead members and as an added entertainment, the Primary Dance class who practice after school performed in their very first performance for us and Morton Homestead members. It was great to see so many smiling faces and clapping hands throughout this performance and students who performed were enthusiastic and energetic.
Within the community, Morton Homestead is a place where the elderly are able to gather, share skills and experiences, establish friendships and connections and take part in many activities the workers make attainable for its members.
Through this program, Brookside students are putting together either a scrap book or poster, representing the information gathered and show casing photos provided by Morton Homestead embers titled ‘This is Your Life’.
Food Technology
Year 7 & 8
Year 7 created their Pancake stack ILT last week and did an amazing job as evident in the pictures. Some students went over & beyond and presented their food in style. They were required to produce a creative and exciting pancake stack suitable for one person and incorporate at least one additional ingredient to give the pancake a new flavour. Fruit was necessary as instructed by the design brief. It was a challenging experience for the year 7s but all of them did a commendable job under pressure!
Year 8s prepared a Special Breakfast for their ILT this term. They outdid themselves and made amazing dishes including Caesar salad, waffles, pancakes and poached eggs. Each breakfast produced was based on a theme such as Father’s day, Mother’s day, a special birthday and party themes.
This is what one of our students had to say:
In year 8, our ILT was to create a breakfast for a design brief of our choosing. We all brainstormed ideas as to what we would make and how we could make it healthier. We planned in detail and when the time came, we were prepared to cook our amazing breakfasts. We all worked using teamwork and skills we have learned from class. It was a good challenge to be on our own and have the freedom to cook whatever we wanted. We all worked hard and the outcome was rewarding. We were all proud of ourselves and the healthy breakfasts we had made.
Amy G 8A
