As we welcome back our students to Term 4, it has been a pleasure seeing the excitement in their faces and eagerness to return to the classroom. Below, you will be able to read about the exciting activities students have been part of over Term 3 and now, as they return to on-site learning.

This reflection has been put together by Shasvini (E8) and Una (E8) with the assistance their class mates from Eucalyptus 8. We hope you enjoy the read.

Sachi Fernando

On behalf Eucalyptus House Leadership Team

Learning to learn from home

This year has been very unpredictable and peculiar for all students as we have experienced online learning. There were many ups and downs but I think it is safe to say that we have conquered it pretty well. Students are looking forward to “doing activities that [where we] can interact with [our] friends which [we] have not been able to achieve in remote learning.”

This time around we were much more prepared for online learning and despite the struggles have adapted towards this situation. We have learnt many more skills to reach our full potential from home, and tried out new resources such as Kahoot, Compass, Google Classroom, Webex, Google Meets, Jamboard, Education Perfect and Google Hangouts.

To keep ourselves engaged and entertained over these confronting times, our house has organised competitions where students can participate in hands-on activities. So far we have had the 'Motivation Poster Competition' where students had to design a motivating and inspiring poster to lift our spirits. Another option was a 'Fort Building Competition' where students had to design a fort and send in a picture. These activities were a fun way for the house to stay connected.

Maths and Science

This term, we are doing a PBL (Project based learning) where students collaborate in groups to design and create an energy efficient home by using our knowledge of measurements and energy conservation. Our job is to create a home that fits under the standards of ‘energy star rating’.

We also focussed on different light bulbs and energy conservation where we looked at the lightbulbs in our house and used an excel spreadsheet to see how much money and energy we can save. At the end of last term, we did a number of Kahoots where the teachers revised our science knowledge from the whole year to make sure that we have understood the topics.

English

We are focusing on our topic, 'Humanity' by analysing sources such as Harrison Bergeron, a short sci-fi story by Kurt Vonnegut. It expands our knowledge and ideas of a society where everyone is equal and are forced not to express themselves. In this story, this is achieved by having people handicapped on certain skills, their looks and their intelligence.

Our English teachers also have introduced two new fortnightly lessons with one of them being a 'Reading for Enjoyment' where we find ourselves doing a certain activity about reading at the start of the lesson, and finish off the lesson by reading for 40 minutes. We apply what we have read by doing some activities based on the 'Reading Comprehension Grid'. The grid is organised by the type and the type of learner a student is.

The other fortnightly lesson focused more on grammar. An example of a lesson we have done is ‘Capital Letters’, where we have the teacher explain in detail about the use of capital letters and where they are necessary and revise this on Education Perfect to apply our knowledge.

Late last term in English, we finished off our main idea on ‘Storyboards’. Students made their own storyboard about a short story they wrote using a variety of tools and applications to create. Some students used StoryBoard while other students created their storyboards by hand with pens, pencils and other traditional art materials or made theirs digitally.

Another part of our CAT was ‘Masterchef and Diversity’ where we focussed on diverse casts of Masterchef, the more culturally friendly challenges in the show, how diversity has influenced our society today, and the importance of diversity in Australian television.

Humanities

Our topic this term is 'My Neighbourhood' where we look into Dandenong's history and how it plays a significant role in the Indigeous culture. We have engaged in our learning by using jamboards to have class discussions, share our ideas and expand our knowledge.

https://jamboard.google.com/d/1yeSsbxrag4yWwkWy9XAzamTVf1zO0k7iLDgzOpirVuE/viewer?f=0

We learnt the stories about ‘Bunjil’ and the ‘Kulin Nation’ and looked into their diets and the importance of conserving animal and plant species and why respecting our land is important for their Aboriginal culture.

Japanese

We have been focusing on the topic 'Body Parts' and have been learning new vocabulary and sentence structures about how to describe human body parts and people. Our classes often begin with a powerpoint which explains the vocabulary and sentence structures where we learn the pronunciation of the words that we will be using in the lesson. We then apply the knowledge that we have learnt to the worksheets we are given, which include puzzles, crosswords and fill in the blanks. This helps us remember the vocabulary and sentence structures easier. If anytime we need help, we can always ask a teacher through Google Hangouts privately, or on the ‘Year 8 Eucalyptus Japanese 2020’ Hangouts group.

Health

The unit, we are focusing on ‘Respectful Relationships’. In these classes, we had to identify characteristics of respectful relationships and how to deal with negative behaviours while staying safe online. We use Education Perfect, where we get small lessons on each of these topics. It teaches us the course material needed to understand and answer the following questions we are given.

At times we always have a Kahoot to see if the teachers see we understand what they have given us to analyse. It is also very fun to play Kahoots with our classmates to see if you end up the winner!

One example of the work we have been given is to figure out our strengths and weaknesses by completing a survey on https://www.viacharacter.org/. Once we have completed the survey and have gotten our answers, we add this to a presentation with a group of teammates to complete a Google Slide presentation on ‘Respectful Relationships Campaign’, where we fill out the first three slides.

Physical Education

Gross and fine motor skills has been our main focus for Physical Education (PE). Starting this class, we get a detailed description of our main focus and we apply what we learnt by completing a worksheet. Our task is to test the description of an exercise and record ourselves with measuring tape. We take this data to find out which was most effective and which was the least. Then we group these exercises into two groups: fine or gross.

The other main idea we have been focusing on is improving on our skill development. Our task here is to find one thing you feel you need to improve on, and record data with you improving on it! This could be from juggling three juggling balls to riding your bike more often. We send this data to our teachers, via the Learning Task.

An update from last term’s PE Challenge: Eucalyptus came…. *drum roll* SECOND! Sadly, Banksia 7 overtook us at the last moment. Great job to all who participated.

Electives: Art

In Art, our main focus is the study of Impressionism. During these classes, we learn about the art style, ‘Impressionism’ and how it has influenced many styles and modern day artists, the time-period where the style originated, famous impressionism paintings and to understand how this style is different. We do this by listening to the teacher’s powerpoint, which goes in depth about impressionism and doing our own research which we display on a poster where we can focus on different areas about the art style/moment. An example of a website we use for making posters is ‘Canva’. We also make our own impressionism artwork with the help of some YouTube videos with tips on how to get the right effect. Below are some examples of paints by our classmates.

We have also been using the new feature ‘Jamboard’ which is like a whiteboard to draw real-time to the class as we guess what they are drawing! This is a little activity to give us a ‘brain break’ and a fun way to start the lesson.

Electives: STEM

Coding has been our main idea for STEM. We have been using a variety of websites and platforms two of which are https://code.org/ and https://www.nationalgeographic.org/interactive/challenge-robots/.

The first website has helped us with the basics of our coding, allowing us to understand the basics by completing certain tasks. We have learnt how to use loops, how to debug codes and how coding is applied in the real world. We use ‘Blockly’ to code, which is basically colourful blocks with instructions written on them.

We have also been using the second website, which focuses more on robots and the engineering process. This website provides us with detailed information about the topic and looks at how much we learnt through a variety of puzzles involving robots and coding.

Here is an example of coding from a student: https://studio.code.org/projects/dance/h3QTfumUgFKcKZLjPYJ55Kao6rTN2GQFzuPmiXWTuTs

Last term in STEM, we finished off our main focus on Mars. Teams of 4 presented a google slide to the teacher as well as building our communication skills by using our microphone. The presentation covered the following criteria: exploration, construction, health and safety and water treatment.

Here is an example of a presentation by Ann, Lan, Shasvini and Una:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YdbiJCDMnhKUePnZbdLjvTzZW53W_Y0YgTBdhhJazKo/edit#slide=id.gc6f9e470d_0_0

Electives: Visual Communication

Students in Visual Communication (otherwise known as VC or Vis Com) have been creating a ‘Bold Board’ where students design a board which can be displayed on different surfaces, depending on the student. An example of this is designing a ‘Bold Board’ for the back of a skateboard.

Final Thoughts

This year has been filled with unexpected events and situations that we would have never thought to be in, but even through all this, I think we can be proud to reflect on this year, and say that we have done it, and by continuing to stay motivated we can fight this together. We are all excited to be back on site and can not wait for things to ease back to normal. Remember, we are in this together!

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