Senior School News

Year 10 Work Experience

3rd week of Term 3  

29 July – 2 August 2019

Completed Work Experience Arrangement forms are starting to be returned, which is fantastic! Students are keen on visiting a variety of different working environments.  These forms need to be returned by all Year 10 students before the 31st of May. If a student is struggling to find a place, I have resources to assist, and have also been feeding placement opportunities onto Compass for both students and parents to view.

Next term all Year 10 students will complete Occupational Health and Safety training by undertaking two Safe@Work tests via the Victorian Education Department's Safe@Work website during school time: the 'General Module' which is relevant to all workplaces, and an 'Industry Module' which is specific to the industry they will be attending.

Students choosing to do Work Experience on a construction site are legally required to obtain a Construction Induction Card (CIC - White Card). This training will be conducted by the CFMEU at school on Wed 15th May. This course will provide each student with a CIC – White Card, which is valid for a lifetime. There is a sign-up sheet for participants in the Year 10 Coordinators’ Office.  Please note – numbers are limited and further information will follow next term.

Karen Talbot

VET / Pathways Coordinator

Study tour from Kyoto Sangyo High School

During the last two weeks of March we hosted a group of Year 10 and 11 students visiting from Kyoto, Japan. Their tour had the primary purpose of improving their English which they achieved through specialized morning classes, integrated classes across a range of subjects and regular classes in the afternoons.

A special thanks to the buddies and the homestay families who made the out of class experiences extremely valuable and the trip saw many new friendships which will continue after they have returned to Japan. The homestay families all commented on what polite guests they were and how much they enjoyed having them stay.

The college maintains a network of homestay families and provides information nights for families considering hosting. For more details contact Mr Northey at nor@prsc.vic.edu.au

Year 10 Forum

On Wednesday the 27th of February, the Year 10s attended their first senior school forum. We attended three sessions. Our first session was MIPS. MIPS is a session which helped us to prepare for our future careers. Firstly, Mrs Talbot had a talk to us about her career path and how she got to where she is today. We then split into our form groups and we completed our career action plans on the Patterson River Careers website. It was really cool to be able to look into different career paths and see jobs that we have never heard of before. After recess, the Year 10s all gathered in the canteen area to find out what we were doing next. An amazing race was next. Awesome. We all rushed to see what teams we were in. We all received our list of places to go and we were off. The stations were really hard. Some had maths question, riddles, trivia, basketball, card houses and the last station was writing a poem about respect. Team 6 and 17 won the challenge. The last part of our day was filled by a very funny speaker named Declan Fay. He came and talked to us about his career in comedy and how he got there. He also told us a very funny story about when he was in high school and he stole some chocolate. All in all the day was awesome and we all learnt some new skills about our future careers.

Bronte Martine, 10B. Year Level Leader

Year 10 Science

DNA-Deoxyribonucleic Acid, as part of our Year 10 Science course students followed a procedure to extract DNA from a variety of plant cells.

First, we had to break down the cell wall and then cell membrane. Once this was done we could get to the nucleus of a cell and start to extract the DNA. It’s in the shape long double helix and breaking down millions of cells allows us to see millions and millions of pieces of DNA all clumped together.

From the Wheat we can see the clumped DNA ‘floating’ in a layer of alcohol.

From the Strawberries we can see the white clumps of DNA sitting at the top of the thin layer of alcohol.

Wheat germ has approx. 5 times the DNA in the nucleus of its cells compared with humans, whereas strawberries has approx. 1/3 the amount of DNA compared with humans. Over all a relatively simple process to see what the stuff looks like that controls our genetic traits.