Middle School Report

Message from the Director of Learning

- Mr. Tom Tahos

Term 2 is well underway and already, Year 9 and Year 10 students have been involved in various learning and well-being activities. We will have the Year 9s participating in the informative ‘safe partying’ and ‘Health Expo’ later this term.  The Year 10 students will be finalising their work experience, and they will be involved in various excursions and workshops, aimed at getting students work ready and making informed decisions about their subject choices.

 

Please remember the following:

 

iRead Program

Each middle school student is required to bring reading material of their choice to their Period 4 class every day, except Wednesdays. The reading material must be school appropriate and a hard copy. Students are responsible to ensure this occurs regularly.

 

School Uniform

All students are expected to be in their winter school uniform. Two items that we seem to have to reinforce continually are - school ties and the correct socks/stockings.

 

Mr. Tom Tahos

Year 9/10 Chinese Excursion to China Town

Australia is one of the most multicultural and diverse countries in the world. To experience the culture and learn the early life of Australia Chinese, our Year 9 and 10 Chinese excursion to China Town opened our eyes to the popular culture and its influences in Australia today.

 

The highlight of our excursion was to visit the Chinese Museum in China Town. It provided us with an amazing tour where we learnt how Chinese mining workers came to Victoria, searching for gold, and their miserable lives they endured due to the notorious “White Australia Policy”.

 

Students also visited the Victorian Immigration Museum where they learnt about, not only Chinese Immigration to Australia and Melbourne in particular, but, many flows of migration from people all over the world which together has made Australia what it is today.

 

This educational experience away from school taught us so much about the culture, the Chinese communities and other cultural groups, that all contribute to make Australia great!

 

Ms. Minnie Zeng

Chinese Teacher

Forensic Science Elective - Who did it?

Students were given a folder full of handwriting samples, finger, shoe and tyre prints to solve the murder of Barnaby Hill. All the evidence was in the folder collected by police and forensic scientists, and they, as detectives must compare and match the murderer to the victim! It was fantastic to hear the theories and motives behind each suspect from our students.

 

Ms. Loan Luong-Nguyen

Science Coordinator

Monash University - Access Champions Student Leadership Day

Year 10 Perspective by Arnetta Wijaya

On Friday the 27th of April, students involved in the Access Monash Championship program were invited to Monash University to partake in various leadership workshops. The aim of these workshops were to empower students to become Champions for Education within their schools and local communities. The program is designed to prepare students to become active community leaders, by giving us a platform in which we are able to design and deliver a project that will make a real difference for our community. The program encourages students to have a voice by helping us develop essential teamwork and entrepreneurial skills. 

 

Throughout the day, we listened to Jessica Brown (one of the inspirational speakers of the day), and participated in many fun activities. One of the most memorable activities was the "develop your own monster" challenge. The Year 10 students had to draw a monster, incorporating characteristics that we thought best represented the qualities that a good leader possesses. Not only did we have a blast during this activity, letting our imaginations run wild and drawing to our hearts' content, we also gained valuable skills in teamwork, communication, project design, and time management as well. 

 

Overall, the experience was truly enlightening. We can most definitely say that all of us came out of the program with a new outlook towards being a good leader. As one of our inspirational speakers, Jessica Brown (training manager of Robogals), told us, "If you don't like it, change it", which explores the idea of how everyone one of us, no matter of race, gender, sexual orientation or position of power we may have; all have the potential to make a difference. It is more than ever crucial for students of our age to step up, as we are the next generation of leaders, who are capable of making a greater change for our society. I would like to acknowledge Mr Tahos and Miss Armstrong for organising and guiding us throughout this program, the Monash Access Championship staff, mentors and presenters for the wonderful day we had, as it would not have been made possible without their dedicated contribution towards this program. 

 

Year 9 Perspective - by Nicholas Rusmin

On Friday the 29th of April, the Year 9 access Monash champions went to Monash University to gain a new insight on leadership and to further develop our skills in that area. We also learned about what it takes to be a Monash champion. We started off with an introduction which explained the year-long program. We will have to create and design a project which promoted tertiary education. With that out of the way, we had an inspirational talk by Jessica Brown, regarding the Robogals' journey and volunteering. Jess reinforced the message of making a change by volunteering, no matter how big or small it is, to the community. We should find our passion and use that as a way to help others in need.

After the morning tea, we split into our groups and went to 4 different workshops. The first one being "Peer Leadership". We were given quotes/meaningful images from inspirational leaders and had to choose one which we felt most connected with. We decided with 'Equality vs Equity'. We believed that a leader should know how to cater to different individuals depending on their circumstances (equity) instead of giving everyone the same thing (equality). Moving on to workshop 2, which was based around "Creative Teamwork". The goal was to work cooperatively and give our different perspectives to make the tallest structure using spaghetti noodles and marshmallows that could withstand a pen. Although we didn't win, we still had lots of fun working together and sharing our ideas!

 

We then had a delicious lunch which was followed by workshop 3; "Creative ways to show what you know". The workshop was focused on displaying our ideas using certain techniques. Our issue was reducing school absences and we had to pitch an idea to solve this. Since we expect our audience  to be 12-16 year olds, we decided to make a short video to release on social media. Our video would include lots of humour with relevant pop culture so it would be appealing to our generation. However, it would have a clear and strong message regarding the importance of going to school. Our last and final workshop was about "Information Search Strategies". In this workshop, we learned some key points to look out for on websites by checking it with C.R.A.A.P. It's an acronym which stands for Currency (timeliness of the information), Relevance (importance of the information for your needs), Authority (credibility of the author), Accuracy (truthfulness and correctness of the content) and Purpose (reason the information exists).

 

Overall, the experience was an eye opener. We gained a new insight on leadership. My mind is more open towards different ways to display my work and how much of an impact it will have on the result. I look forward to the challenge of designing and creating our project with my fellow peers!

 

Thank you.