Student Voice

School Uniform Survey

We would like to thank all of the parents and carers who completed our recent School Uniform Survey. We received some excellent feedback and have now moved to our final phase of obtaining opinions, which is to gain responses from our teachers.

We look forward to updating the community in due course and once again thank you for taking part in our uniform review.

The Student Representative Council (SRC)

Whole School Assembly

On Tuesday, 25th July, Students and staff were officially welcomed back to school for Term 3 at a Whole School Assembly, which was led by our Student Representative Council.

Whilst students and staff were coming into our Assembly, Nonso Chukwumela-Agha from Year 8 entertained everyone by playing the guitar. This was a great way to start our Assembly and we thank Nonso for his fantastic performance.

Our School Captains, Arshdeep Singh and Abigail Delia opened the Assembly with an Acknowledgement of Country. This was followed by an introduction by Mr Smith, who introduced our new staff; Mr Bailey Smith our Performing Arts Teacher and Ms Bhati and Ms Whytcross, who are both Integration Aides.

Some of the things that Mr Smith spoke about on Tuesday were to remind us of our College motto, 'We Grow Through Connection' and how 'forming meaningful and positive connections with others will allow you to further grow and improve'. He also spoke of our School Wide Positive Behaviour theme for Term 3, which is 'Ready to Learn' and how this supports 'our strong focus of developing and maintaining an orderly and calm learning environment'. Mr Smith further explained what 'Ready to Learn' means for students (there is more information about 'Ready to Learn' on the Student Achievements page). Mr Smith also spoke about our upcoming performing arts events and other news happening around the College.

We were given an update on the School Uniform Survey, with our SRC President, Tara Cudmore, letting our school community know that we have received feedback from parents, carers and students on the uniform and we will now be asking our teachers to give their opinions. We look forward to updating everyone when all of the responses have been collated and analysed.

Taliyah De Melo, on behalf of all of the House Captains, gave information on the borrowing of Sports Equipment. Students can now borrow the equipment through their sub-schools (footballs, rugby balls, basketballs, volleyballs and soccer balls). They will need to put their name on a sign out sheet. Each ball is labelled with the sub-school it belongs to and students must borrow from their own sub-school. Ms Robinson will check each sub-school at the end of each week and the team with all of their equipment returned and undamaged will win a recess in the gym the following week.

Kaneisha Lynn and Abbie McCrimmon provided updates on both the College Production, 'Back to the 80s' and the Victorian State Schools Spectacular - of which they are both part of. You can read more about these two events on their respective pages in this newsletter.

Mr Smith ended the Assembly by presenting awards to year 9 students who had achieved outstanding results in reading, literacy and numeracy for NAPLAN (please see our Student Achievements page for full details of these awards).

We would like to thank all of the Student Representative Council who, under the guidance of our SRC Coordinator, Ms Titcombe, provided an excellent and informative Whole School Assembly, with a special mention to our student presenters and performer: Lauren Cudmore, Yasmin Lambrinos, Kaneisha Lynn, Abbie McCrimmon, Bec Watson, Tara Cudmore, Taliyah De Melo, Arshdeep Singh, Abigail Delia and Nonso Chukwumela-Agha.

Science Incursion with the University of Melbourne

Our Year 7 and some of our Year 10 students were recently fortunate to have students from the Melbourne University Science Department visiting, to conduct science demonstrations and to talk about their experiences in their education journey.

The overwhelming feedback from our students was positive on the 'fun and creative' experiments that the Melbourne University students showed them over the two days that they were at Pakenham Secondary College.

Here is some of the feedback from our Year 7s:

I thought the best part was the slinkies with the cups because it sounded like the guns from Star Wars. It was also interesting that with a UV light you can see the germs on someone’s hands or body.
I liked the activities because you got to do the stuff they were showing. I also found out the 5-second rule doesn’t work.
The demos were really interesting and engaging. It was interesting that you can see sound waves.
I liked the skull activity, as I find it interesting. I discovered that College schedules are very different than high school.
The activities were the best part because we got to do most of them ourselves and participate. It was great to learn about uni because I was originally interested in it, but it made me more interested.
The best part was engaging in the activities and learning new things. I found out that your hands have a lot more germs on them than you realise.
The best part was hearing the presenter’s stories because it made them feel more human and remind me that they are people too. It was interesting that in the original Star Wars movies they used slinkies to make the light saber sounds.
When Connor made an explosion I liked it because when he popped the balloon, it made a pretty effect. It made me want to see more.
I liked that we got to use the drone and see different ways we could move I, what it could be used for. It was interested what uni people do in a day or what their life is, the careers you can do and many different ways.
It was so fun to learn things and see the scenarios. The germs and viruses and how it can spread was the most interesting thing.
I liked the activities because I liked to see all of the cool and interesting experiments. I learnt about three elements on the periodic table. I forgot what they were but they were really interesting and they made such a cool explosion.