Secondary School

PDHPE update

On Monday afternoons, Mr Darcy Hall and Mr Curtis Townrow have accompanied a small group of students who are involved in an after school golf program at Rich River Golf Club. The students involved have spent the best part of Term 1 and 2 playing nine rounds of golf where they are continuing to refine their skills with the program due to wrap up shortly. Word on the street is that the teachers only beat the students by one shot a couple a weeks ago. Won’t be long before we see the students take home the win.  

Our Year 10 PASS students have spent the term fine tuning their golf skills. Students bike ride out to Rich River Golf Club where they have spent time on the driving range, chipping greens, putting greens and mini golf to come. Thank you to Rich River Golf Club for supporting our school and the students. 

The Year 9 PASS classes have just begun their unit on bike riding and safety. Students will slowly build up their fitness base over the course of the term aiming to be able to ride 100km for their PASS journey which will occur in Term 3. Students have spent time so far exploring the bush land in the East of Echuca. 

Our Year 7-10 PDHPE students have all started new sporting units this term. They range from sports such as soccer, gaelic football, golf, tchoukball, ultimate frisbee, sofcrosse, training methods and dance. We’re all looking forward to a great term of fun and exercise. 

If anyone has any golf clubs acquiring dust that you’d like to get rid of, please contact Miss Leah Thompson at lthompson@moamagrammar.nsw.edu.au and we’ll happily take them off your hands. We are continuing to build our golf program with something exciting up our sleeve which we are very hopeful of showing off in the near future. 

Year 7 Art Guest Speaker: Olivia Lawton

Our Year 7s were treated to a special guest speaker last week - local artist, Olivia Lawton. Olivia was educated in Echuca, and her grandmother was a famous Echuca water-colour artist, specialising in Australian native flora and fauna; she was trained and worked locally as an Art Teacher. 

Olivia's presentation engaged students with Marion Gould's (her grandmother) studio practices of collecting road-kill or bird, feather-loss, using a range of magnifying glasses to observe minute detail in animal coat-patterns and feather structure, colour and pattern. Animals would be stored in a deep-freezer ready for observational drawing and painting practices.

Students were able to examine the special magnifying glasses and try them on to see what it was like to be Marion Gould, and paint exquisitely fine detail in a birds eye, beak, claws and feathers.

Using a one hair paint-brush Marion Gould could paint in the miniature style; examples of this were also passed around the curious, seated Year 7 students

Olivia talked about connections between paintings and birds and the role and effect of colour.

She also shared images of her own artworks, some of which are collaborations with her grandmother's unfinished artworks which Gould continued to create until her 90s. Olivia's artworks layer Realism with Abstraction creating original compositions in guauche, and water-colour.

Olivia's exhibtion at THE FOUNDRY, ECHUCA was a sell-out exhibition during the month of May. We were most fortunate to have Olivia come and address the students.

Year 10 and 11 Commerce and Legal Studies

On Tuesday 9 May the Year 11 Legal Studies and Year 10 Commerce class took a trip to the Deniliquin court to spend the day there to see first hand how local courts are run. Before entering the court, we met with the Senior Sergeant, who answered our questions about the legal system and how he came to acquire that position. He also explained a brief history of the court, which was built in the late 1800s for Supreme Court purposes but later became a local court. Next, the classes went into the courthouse with a bow towards the coat of arms and watched some short cases of adjournments for later dates. The court was closed for a children's case and the two classes proceeded outdoors to speak with a solicitor. Her story of travelling the world to teach law before finally becoming a legal practitioner in the local area intrigued many of the students. 

Following that short break, we witnessed a few more cases, most ending in adjournments. There were a wide variety of cases, from drug use, theft, licence disqualification and restraining orders. After the morning cases were completed we went outside for recess, which ended soon as we returned to the court to watch the afternoon cases. It was then that the classes got to speak with the Magistrate about her career as a full time Magistrate and coroner. Many of us were surprised to find that coronal investigations could take place in the local court, as it’s a rarity. 

After our talk with the magistrate, the afternoon went smoothly with a few more cases and a trip to the temporary holding cell under the courthouse. This excursion helped us understand the court process in more detail, and we would like to thank Ms Thompson and Mrs Westblade for giving us this opportunity.

By Kithmini and Clare