House Update

Blackwood

Term 2 was another successful term for Blackwood, with our enthusiastic house members all putting themselves forward and participating in Active April. It was so great to see the activity people were getting up to this term, in both active april and across the term in intra-school sports. Our lunchtime VCE sport teams have been doing such an amazing job this year where all teams have qualified for finals! 

• Basketball - yr 11 boys, year 12 boys, mixed girls team qualified for the finals
• Soccer - yr 11 boys qualified for the finals.
• Netball - with covid restrictions and lockdowns, we are yet to continue with the rest of the matches.
• Cross country - Many qualified for the next round and showed immense house spirit by either running, jogging or walking, contributing house points.

This year Active April was on again and we have placed a fantastic second! We collated a massive 6214 hours of exercise in total as a house in the month of April. Shout out to Marlowe Wilton, Esra Alkoraishi and Jed Wong for placing top 3 within Blackwood, contributing the most hours to the house. With 183 participants, we have yet again shown our house pride as well as showcasing our athleticism ;)

Another highlight of the term was our house’s efforts towards chorals and the amazing efforts from our peers and members of Blackwood. On behalf of the Blackwood Leadership team, we would like to pay a huge thank you to all Blackwood students that came to school early, sacrificed their snack, lunch breaks and even stayed after school to practise for chorals. All your dedication and hard work is so appreciated and will most definitely pay off in a most anticipated success for Chorals!  

Another commendable occurrence that has been happening throughout the term, is the amazing effort form our House Art team. They demonstrated their remarkable ability to make a quality piece of art within such a limited and short time frame, so we extend a heartfelt well done to them. We look forward to seeing everyone put forward their greatest efforts in the coming term, ensuring our house a win for Chorals. We hope to see everyone back and ready in term 3, with the lyrics to all the songs memorised and rehearsed. And can’t wait to see everyone back and ready to take the win, not only for Chorals but for the year! Regardless of what happens, we, the leadership team, will always be proud of you. 

Well done on getting through Term 2 Blackwood Knights!!

The Blackwood Leadership Team

Cottrell

Lockdown proved to be a challenging obstacle for Cottrellians to overcome as it meant the postponing of our choral mass singing. This performance was practiced,rehearsed and perfected by cottrell in the past few months and was the byproduct of cottrell's hard work which will hopefully be witnessed in early term 3. Despite this setback, we remained diligent to the completion of our house art by our original set date and engaged with the house’s jolt of joy which improved spirits and allowed Cottrell to remain connected with one another. This activity along with Active april, a competition won by Cottrell as a result of our house spirit and preseverance, would present Cottrell as a house that should not be diminished. 

Furthermore, Cottrellians have been active in other ways outside of lockdown. We absolutely smashed it in the colouring competition, with many of our house members handing in their wonderful pieces of art and awarding us first place for participation! In the same comp,Cindy Chen and Carol Danial won us second and third place for quality respectively! [include pictures] And cross country, wherein many VCE students took time out of their day to participate, displaying our house spirit! 

Just some reminders...

For all our chess enthusiasts and those interested, house chess competitions will be held in the earlier part of term 3, so make sure to brush up on your chess tactics to get some spicy mates. Finally, don’t forget to practice the set song and ‘Coming Home’ during your break! With all that said, although we will miss you over the holidays, we sincerely hope you all have some time off to yourselves to rest and rejuvenate before you return! 

Ron Aby, Hamza Adam & Alex Jaison

Kororoit

This term has flown by with the blink of an eye. Despite the slight disruption of the lockdown, Kororoit was flexible and was able to jump right back into the final weeks of term! Prior to the lockdown, Chorals rehearsals were well underway and Kororoit had progressed well with each element of the performance. The instrumental ensemble was having fun with their small group jazz performance, our small choir had put in plenty of hard work with numerous rehearsals for multiple weeks in a row, both our instrumental and vocal soloists were itching to perform on the big stage, and last but definitely not least, the whole house was ready to show just how amazing all our voices combined could be when performing our two mass songs. When we arrive on the day of our Chorals performance for the second time of the year, Kororoit will be ready with a performance like no other!

A critical element of the Chorals event is the House art. A team of six Kororoitians from all four year levels poured all of their creative knowledge into one canvas, and with their incredible dedication to creating a magnificent piece and devotion to the house, they pulled off an amazing painting that any artist would be proud of. The inspiration behind the piece stemmed from Kororoit’s chosen mass song, ‘Back Home’ by Andy Grammar, depicting the mighty Kororoit Dragon protecting a misplaced Suzanne Cory student as they find their way back home. 

In the spare time that has been vacated since the lockdown and restrictions over singing at school, House assemblies have become a time for various fun homegroup activities, where every student can take a break from studying and the homegroups can even compete against each other. In the last house assembly, each homegroup participated in nine activities, trying their hardest to best the scores of the other homegroups in each activity. It was a chaotic but rewarding 40 minutes, especially for Mr Duckworth and the eight Kororoit leaders, who were each in charge of one activity each and frantically ran around the homegroups organising their activity. It was exhilarating to see the students of Kororoit be so involved and thrilled to partake in the “Round Robin Blitz”. 

Now that we are all officially on term break, the Kororoit Leadership Team would like to wish everyone a restful break. The past 10 weeks have definitely been hectic for everyone, so we hope that the next two weeks will be blissful and prepare us all for the second half of the year! As always, the Kororoit Leadership Team looks forward to seeing you all again very soon and feel free to contact any one of us whenever :) 

Kathy Nguyenvu and Luca Chiavaroli

Kororoit House Captains"

Rothwell

Hey Rothwellians, it’s your captains Sandy and Sahithya!! 

We just wanted to say how proud we are of all your efforts and perseverance despite lockdown and other hurdles that may have been thrown your way. Although we weren’t able to see all your hard work pay off at Chorals, you guys have proven to us you have more than what it takes to win throughout all our practice sessions (especially the last one ;)). Keep your heads up as we will continue fighting and eventually get the chance to show the other houses what we’re made of!! After a hectic term 2 make it a priority to recharge over the term break so you hit the ground running for an even more jam packed term 3, especially for our year 12s as this is our final full schooling term before the exam craze begins (scary, I know).

As we all know, Mr Van Wyk (Assistant Head of House) is leaving us and moving schools. Although we are all saddened by his leave, we just wanted to take this time to thank Mr Van Wyk for not only being one of our favorite teachers but also one of our best friends. Thank you for going out of your way to being more than just a teacher to all of us and we are all going to miss having you around. The house sends all our love and well wishes and we hope you settle in at your new school fairly easily (this should be a breeze for you as they are going to love having you there).

All the best, 

Sandy and Sahithya (Rothwell House Captains)

Ps- A small note from Ms Hamilton- A BIG thanks to Mr Van Wyk for helping me settle in as Head of House of the best house in the school. He will be sorely missed by all students and teachers including me! From term three, Ms Sordello will be moving into the Assistant role. We both can’t wait to continue the legacy of the family house and make sure everyone is feeling supported and excited for chorals- and then everything else this year throws at us!