Health & Human Development

Australian Karate Federation Nationals

Zachary Amphlett took part in the  Australian Karate Federation Nationals in Tasmania a couple of weeks ago. Zachary is currently completing Year 12 at St. Peter's College - Cranbourne Campus has continually focused on his goal of competing in Karate at the highest level possible. This has resulted in him travelling across the country as well as the world to compete in competitions representing Victoria and Australia. In this particular event, he received a bronze in the Under 21 - 67kg male Kumite and silver in the Senior - 67kg male Kumite. The latter of these is especially outstanding as he competed for the first time in the adults category. Zachary is a student who is an example to other students of balancing school work and a sporting passion, and the skills which he has learnt over the years in Karate (Teamwork, Discipline and Time Management to name a few) have enabled him to balance these two areas extremely well. We in Avila House and St. Peter's College congratulate Zachary on his achievements and wish him luck in future competitions and the remainder of his Year 12 studies.

Mr A. McMellon

Avila House Leader

Year 11 Health and Human Development St Thomas of the Apostle Excursion

As students part of the Year 11 Health and Human Development class, our unit this semester focuses on learning about the human life-span and development; this involves exploring concepts from fertilisation to late childhood. To extend from the Kids on Clyde excursion the week prior, our class had the opportunity on the 22nd of August to interact and socialise with a range of students from St. Thomas the Apostle Primary School. As a class, we walked down to the primary school and engaged with prep to Grade 6 students from the Ephesus Learning Community. In small groups, we were able to spend 15 minutes with each class observing and gaining an understanding of their development through four different aspects; physical, intellectual, emotional and social in their different year levels.

We were divided into four groups then distributed around the different age ranges where they had Preps learning to sound out and spell their golden words using ICT, Grade 1 and 2 learning about differences (subtraction), Grade 3 and 4 students learning how to count by 1’s, 10’s and 100’s and Grades 5 and 6 learning about powering a lightbulb using a small battery. Throughout our visit, we were able to connect with the students and view how throughout each year level their learning was at different stages and becoming more abstract, we were also able to see how their social interactions expanded as they got older. The emotional development of students also differed as they were learning to share, coping with the attention of the older students in their learning spaces and feeding off each other’s energy. Physically, the differences between the size of the children was quite remarkable, even within the same year level.

We appreciated this hands on learning experience because it gave us the ability to have an understanding of the developmental stages that these students have and allowed us to be informed in an interactive way. With this being said, this opportunity was a very beneficial experience to take part in, particularly for those who do not have younger siblings and were able to physically see and interact with the differences in development. We are very grateful to the community of St Thomas of the Apostle for allowing us to be part of their learning community.

Karylle Escaro and Shannon Gomez

Year 11 Health and Human Development Students