Secondary News

TAS with Ms Lynch

Year 11 Hospitality 

Year 11 Hospitality have been continuing to build on their food preparation skills while completing their ‘Use Food Preparation Equipment’ unit of competency. This week they were introduced to the deep fryer, learning the technique to safely deep fry foods. The sweet beef samosa they prepared were a huge hit! 

Rural Cup Catering

Three students from our Year 11 Hospitality class, together with Ms Lynch, Mrs Regan and Mrs Logan, worked hard to provide morning tea and lunch for all staff at the recent Rural Cup hosted at MCS. Students cooked scones, assembled wraps, baked quiches and muffins and packaged food to ensure staff were well fed and refuelled for the busy day. They did a fantastic job, with many staff members commenting on the high quality, delicious food they received. 

Year 7 Technology – Textiles

Ms Lynch’s Year 7 class have been started their new unit of work, focusing on Textiles. They have learnt how to thread and safely use the sewing machine. Their first mini project, a ‘Tooth Monster’ is almost complete, with students demonstrating skills in using a pattern to cut out fabric, ironing, sewing a seam and hand sewing buttons onto fabric. Throughout the term students will build on these skills to design a make a monster themed soft toy. 

Art with Miss Johnson

In the second week of the school holidays Madison Treacy, Kylah Fuller and Armelle Blair attended #2 of the HSC intensive Art workshops hosted by the National Art School in Sydney. While there the girls went to the 2022 Art Express and 23rd Biennale of Sydney Exhibitions before creating their own ceramic and drawing artworks. At the end of the workshop students exhibited their artworks in a group show at the art school. This fantastic experience allowed students to refine their art making skills and consider how they might extend their HSC major works. Great work everyone! 

English Faculty News

Drama

For the first time in almost 13 years Senior Drama is running at Molong Central School. Year 11 have picked up the subject well and Mr Carver believes they are all on their way to becoming the next big thing. In Term 1 they focused on improvisation and play building which is having the skills and creativity to create a piece of theater from anything. 

Stella, Abbeylea, Delta, Bee and Danielle have been working exceptionally hard to keep up with the demands of the subject and with their first performance in front of an audience coming up soon, everyone in the class is feeling nervous and very excited to perform. Mr Carver has every bit of faith in them that they will perform amazingly. 

There are a lot of amazing things planned for this Senior Drama class in the coming future. Such things include trips to Orange High School to work closely with other Drama students to improve their skills and a trip to Sydney to watch some band 6 performances from the entire state and other amazing plays. 

The English staff are very excited to see where their study of Drama and the performing arts can take these very talented young ladies.

Debating

The debating season is about to start up again at Molong Central. We will have two teams competing in the Premier’s Debating Challenge this year; a Year 7 and 8 team lead by Mrs Vardanega and a Year 9 and 10 team lead by Mrs Healey.  

Debating is a great chance for students to demonstrate their knowledge about a range of interesting topics such as animal cruelty, school rules and political issues. The students work together as a team under the pressure of time constraints to successfully produce a coherent argument, either for or against the topic they receive.  

Our students will be battling it out for the win against 3 other schools from around the region over the next few months for a chance to enter the state finals. It is great fun travelling to other schools and having the chance to share your ideas and passions about relevant topics. 

There is still time to join our teams for this year. If you are interested or have some questions about what we do in debating, please visit the English staff room.  

Public Speaking

Several students have participated in public speaking competitions this year. Olivia Philpott in Year 10 participated in the Plain English Speaking Award run by the Arts Unit. As part of the requirements, Olivia was expected to deliver an 8 minute prepared speech on a topic of her choice. Olivia spoke about ‘Fast fashion trends and materialism. She then had to complete a 3 minute impromptu speech. She was presented with the topic of ‘A package Deal’ and then had 3 minutes to prepare her ideas before speaking. Olivia spoke with confidence and was a positive role model for our school. Well done, Olivia!

Another competition that students have participated in is the CWA Public Speaking competition in Orange. Students were expected to prepare a 3 minute speech on one of the topics that were allocated. Lydia Philpott competed in the Year 7 and 8 group. She presented her speech on ‘Teaching my grandparents to use a smartphone.’ She worked very hard on her speech and gave a strong presentation on the day. 

Taylah Bliss and Olivia Philpott also took part in the Year 9 and 10 section of the competition. Olivia presented a speech on the topic ‘Horizons.’ Taylah presented on ‘Grandparents, naggers or national treasures.’ Both girls presented their speech convincingly and confidently. Congratulations to Taylah Bliss who placed fourth in the Year 9 and 10 competition!

HSIE with Ms Vis

On Friday, 27th of May, Yr 11 Community and Family Studies made our way  down to Molong Early Learning Centre to practice observation as a research method. When we arrived we were enthusiastically met by two groups of children, the preschool room (ages 4-5) and the infants room (ages 2-4). The class split up between the groups and spent time playing side-by-side with them as they observed their communication and developmental skills. 

The group were particularly impressed by a group of preschool boys who were using trial and error to build intricate towers using building blocks. As part of our topic ‘Individuals and Groups’ the class have been examining group dynamics and used their observations to create sociograms of the groups of children to explore how they worked together. Students found it especially interesting with this group, noting who were the most confident children, those more willing to take risks in their learning and those that stood back watching what the others were doing. The CAFS class had a great time interacting with the children and will return to the centre when we explore our Socialisation topic.

Young Leaders Conference - Hayden Bliss

On Tuesday 19th of May, William Thorne and Vaughn Quelnan and I attended James Sheahan Catholic High School for the Young Leaders of the Central West summit. School captains from the Orange region attended a meeting on how we can improve youth based issues for young people within the Orange and Cabonne area.

It was a great opportunity to converse and learn from the nearby schools to see what strategies they have implemented and what strategies we should implement to improve the wellbeing of the students at MSC. After a day of brainstorming and discussion, we had all created a plan to put forward to Orange City council on what could be done to improve the wellbeing and mental health of the youth within the Central West. This was then shared and explained to the Mayor of Orange Jason Hamling. Overall, the day was excellent at bringing to light various issues and solutions to youth based problems within the Central West while connecting with like minded individuals from the various Orange schools.