Teaching & Learning
Legal Studies
Emi’s Year11 Legal Studies class were lucky enough to have a private Q and A with a criminal lawyer. Bethan discussed her real life experiences in the legal field and students asked insightful and relevant questions that linked closely to our most recent assessment. Thank you Bethan for this meaningful glimpse into life in the law.
Digi Tech
Year 9
Year 9s have been working on elements of graphical game design, our second unit for the semester. Students have just started exploring sprite creation, making animated sprites and backgrounds as they become more familiar with design tools such as Game Maker Studio 2 and Piksel. This work contributes to students’ portfolios in graphical game development, which will lead into the design and creation of their own games later this semester.
Year 10
In our first unit of Year 10 Digital Technologies, we had the opportunity to learn about what makes a computer a computer and about various methods of cryptography that have been used throughout history. We also learned about networking, the preface for the next unit in web design, consisting of topics such as the worldwide connection of the internet and how it works.
Right now, we are learning about microcontrollers. So far in this unit we have learned about wiring and various types of LEDs such as static colour, fading in and out and RGBA LEDs. We’re also learning to program in C++, the base for the Arduino language.
In year 10 DigiTech this term we had the opportunity to create our own website using HTML and CSS. It was pretty interesting, as we had the freedom to create our own websites so each of our designs was different. For students that have reached the standards, an extension of using javascript or PHP was also provided. I made a photography website with some conventional features a website would have, and I tried challenging myself by creating a feedback feature with the use of web hosting.
Year 12
Software Development students have just begun their SAT - a School Assessed Task - where they work with real clients to produce real software. The first steps of this lengthy process involves planning their time from this week until their final SAT due date in August. Pictured here are students working on their Gantt charts, a project planning tool.
Selina Dennis
Food Tech
Year 11
This week the year 11s produced their SAC recipe from their chosen region around the world! Some made custard tarts, chicken stew and fish tacos! They did a fantastic job to represent their chosen region.
Year 10
Recently Year 10's completed their KLT on "Preservation". They have spent the past few weeks learning about different ways to preserve food, chose a dish that showcased a preservation method, and produced this dish in class. They cooked some beef tacos with a pickled onion topping, jam drop biscuits with home made mixed berry jam, a watermelon and rosewater mocktail with dehydrated orange garnish and hot cross buns. Here are some photos of their finished products!
Year 12
Last week the year 12s made a Vietnamese Chicken Salad showcasing a balanced meal containing a range of macronutrients. They all produced delicious looking salads and demonstrated fantastic technical and organisational skills in the kitchen!
Arts
Year 8 Melodrama
This term in drama the year 8s have been doing a melodrama unit. This included working in groups, producing our own scripts, rehearsing, using costumes, props, melodramatic conventions and lighting to eventually put on a performance to an audience. We had improvising activities which helped overall the way we conducted our performances and helped a lot with scripting. We watched multiple different examples of melodramas which gave everyone guidance for plot lines and what conventions to include in the performance. The process of performance included the thrill and nervousness of entertaining the audience but overall was a very enjoyable experience.
Thalia B
Upcoming Performing Arts events.
Keep an eye out for information regarding these exciting events, we can’t wait to welcome the CHS community back for performance showcases!
- Kool Skools album release
- Instrumental Music concerts
- Classroom Music concerts
- Dance showcase evening
- School Production “Back to the 80s!” (auditions early Term 2)
8A 2 Point Perspective KLT
Both these pieces stood out due to the students’ commitment throughout the process and personalised interpretation of the task.
Charlotte M
Quincey M
Jenna Carracher
Homegroup
As homegroup teacher to the Amazing and Awesome 7A we had a sushi making class - as you can see from the photos the kids loved it !!!! Many many many thanks to Jeanette and food tech assistant Caitlin for all their help!!!
Science
Year 9
In science, we did a quite interesting practical experiment involving the use of the bunsen burner and different chemicals. The aim of the experiment was to identify how the colour of the flame was affected by the different chemicals we used. It was quite enjoyable and interesting to see the different colours and reactions. Overall a nice time.
Conor M
Forensic Science
In year 9 forensics the students did a practical on blood typing which they thoroughly enjoyed - move over CSI Miami!
Year 7
We looked at classification using a selection of leaves and tried to classify them and we also had an excellent time with animal encounters! Although the snake was very challenging for some of us :)
Year 11 Chemistry
Chalk calculating the number of moles
In our chemistry lessons we had a practical where we grabbed a chalk stick and weighed it then we drew around each other like forensic scientists do with dead bodies and then we weighed the chalk again and calculated the number of moles used. It was really fun being a forensic scientist!
Feyyaz K
Magnesium oxide- moles
We placed magnesium oxide in a crucible and heated it in order to understand the chemical reaction with respect to molar mass and the number of moles - at the moment we are using chemistry model kits to represent different chemical structures and their bonding.
Aimee P
The students were absolutely engaged and enthralled with making chemical models using their model kits, one group actually made the chemical model of cocaine! Which is a very difficult chemical model to put together.
Illumina
The Science department has been lucky enough to receive FREE Strawberry DNA Extraction Kits DNA from Illumina as part of their Future is Bright program to celebrate DNA day on the 25th of April. Please see https://dnaday.org/ and https://www.illumina.com/
Coburg High School is extremely grateful to Illumina in supporting our students’ learning and engagement in STEM.
Year 12 Chemistry
In year 12 chemistry the students had a fabulous time looking at experiments studying the effect of the rate of reaction on changing the surface area and concentration with magnesium and hydrochloric acid observing the change in volume of hydrogen over time.
Year 12 Biology
Year 12 Biology have been busy bees looking at protein structure modelling, modelling the trp Operon, looking at the liver enzyme through experimentation and they observed the rates of photosynthesis . Great work from our fabulous biologists!
Year 8
Our year 8's had some brilliant mitosis models using a range of materials - which was fabulous & very inventive!
We also had some AMAZING cell models from our year 8's including edible ones ! Well done to all our year 8's we really appreciate all your efforts on such great models!
Emily Rose-Jones, Katherine Ryan & Lakshmi Sharma
English Language
Year 11 English Language students have been exploring how children acquire language, focusing particularly on the learning of phonemes - sounds - in child speech. Many of them have found out what their own first words were, asking caregivers for cute stories from when they were babies. Some have even been able to watch videos of themselves as babies and toddlers!
Next term we'll be studying the process of learning that occurs when a child is bilingual, and comparing all aspects of first language learning with additional language learning that occurs later in life.
Did you know?
Children tend to acquire sounds known as "stops" (or "plosives") fairly quickly, such as 'b', 't' 'd' and 'g'. They also tend to acquire bilabial sounds (sounds involving two lips) fairly quickly such as 'm' and 'p'. Coupled with vowels, this can lead to logical conclusions as to why babies refer to their parents and caregivers as "mama" and "dada" in English, 'mami' and 'ata' in Slovenian, 'mama' and 'tata' in Polish, 'ammi' and 'baba' in Urdu and 'baba' and 'babiin' in Wiradjuri. Not all languages have this correlation with kinship terms, but the number of languages that do is statistically significant!
Selina Dennis
National Day Against Bullying
Students in the year 10 Health Perspectives class were divided into five groups of five and ran a 1 hour session with all year 7 classes based on the themes of the National Day Against Bullying, which this year was on the 18th March. The year 10 students planned their session and delivered the content to all year 7 HGs. The day ran really smoothly, and feedback from the year 7s and their teachers was extremely positive. The year 10s also enjoyed the challenge, and now have a new appreciation for their teachers and how hard it can be to keep students engaged and interested.
Samara Harris