2017 Learning Festival

Learning Festival 2017 Report

The learning festival is a week of theme-based activities designed to provide students with a daily challenge to work on cooperatively with-in their teams to encourage creative thinking and problem-solving skills. This Year’s theme was the Commonwealth Games, as it will be hosted by Australia early next year and it began with the Koorie Games Day.

This year, the Learning festival was kicked off on Monday 4th December with a day run by our local Indigenous Elders, Aunty Julie, and Aunty Kath, and some of our own Koorie students. The Koorie Games Day started with acknowledgement of country and an introduction to the local traditional teachings and an aboriginal perspective of the Commonwealth Games. Students were then introduced briefly to the Koorie Games and were broken up into 4 mobs based on their precincts to design their head-bands, arm-bands and team chants:

After recess, and for most of the rest of the day, students participated in a round-robin of 8 different events each lead by one of our own Koorie students. These included the Koorie sports of;

Kai (keeping the fur ‘koala’ ball from falling)
Borna Jokee (paper spear throwing and dodging)
Munhanganing (group ‘flies’ and ‘lizards’ team chase)
Thurnda-Gu (pushing a roller along the ground)
Battendi (spear the ‘koala’ off its perch with bamboo ‘spears’)
Kalkadoon Kee’an (spin and throw a string ball at a target)
Weme (a stones and rock boule-styled game)
Jhal-Poon-Dar (a memory game with 10 nature)

The day ended with the School Leaders competing in bamboo ‘spear’ throwing competitions, a team chant cheering battle, and closing announcements and thanks to all involved.