Year Eight 

Food Technology 

The students were asked to research healthy burger options and ingredients, taking into account factors such as calorie count, nutritional value, and taste. Using this information, they designed their own healthy burger recipes, incorporating a variety of fresh vegetables, lean meats, and whole grains.

After developing their recipes, the students got to work in the kitchen, preparing and cooking their burgers. They took great care in selecting quality ingredients and followed proper food handling and cooking techniques to ensure that their burgers were both delicious and safe to eat.

Once the burgers were cooked, the students took part in a peer evaluation session, where they tasted and evaluated each other's burgers based on factors such as taste, texture, and presentation. This was an excellent opportunity for them to share feedback and learn from each other's successes and challenges.

In addition to the healthy burgers, the students also had the opportunity to refine their cooking skills by making ANZAC and chocolate chip biscuits. They followed a recipe and used proper measuring and mixing techniques to prepare the dough. They also learned about the history and significance of ANZAC biscuits, which are a traditional Australian biscuit made to commemorate the soldiers who fought in World War I.

After baking the biscuits in the oven, the students enjoyed sharing them with each other during a taste-testing session. These projects provided an excellent opportunity for our students to learn about nutrition, cooking techniques, teamwork, and creativity. 

Visual Art

This term has started off with students unpacking their new Unit of Inquiry.  At the end of last term students were exposed to the Victorian Curriculum expectations and achievement standards for Visual Art.  The students had the opportunity to pose questions they had about the curriculum and areas they were interested in.  We discussed the idea of creating a close connection with other areas of the curriculum, namely English and Humanities.  We discussed the fact that in Term 2 year 8 students would be reading The Hunger Games.  Students were then exposed to the work of several Street Artists and had the opportunity to analyse and discuss the works they viewed and the themes that the Artists were commenting upon.  This forms the basis of their new unit's  Statement of Inquiry 'A genre can communicate and express one's cultural and social values and beliefs'.  Over the next few weeks students will start unpacking the key ideas within this statement, while at the same time in English they will work toward unpacking the themes and characters in The Hunger Games.  Students will then have the opportunity to choose a persona from the text and a theme which impacts the character, and create a piece of Street Art as that persona.  Stay tuned as students start to create their four preliminary images working toward their final submission for this term.  

Health and Physical Education

The Year 8 Students in Physical Education have transitioned remarkably well. Students have started Term 2 by completing the beep test. The aim is for them to test their individual fitness and hopefully improve on Term 1 results. This term students will be exploring invasion sports focusing on attack and defence strategies. The two sports of focus will be AFL and Soccer. For Health Students will be exploring Community and Cyber Safety focusing on how we can improve our safety online. The first area of focus will be looking at safety and what risks we can be exposed to in the community.

Robotics and Coding

Last term, students applied their coding knowledge to create a chatbot or battle simulator program using the Python coding language. This term, students select an area of robotics and coding to explore in greater depth. 

Students choose to extend themselves further in graphics, animation, game development, webpages or Lego EV3 robotics. Through project based learning, they create a product or solution to meet a need which they have identified. This allows students to further their technical coding knowledge whilst developing transferrable skills such for research, collaboration and project management.

Financial Literacy

As we started Term 2, The Year 8 students have explored the link between resources allocation and financial decision-making. Students have developed the concept of scarcity and opportunity cost, recognising the importance of managing limited resources to satisfy unlimited needs and wants. Students have completed a cost and benefit analysis and compared the trade-offs of various choices to apply the concepts of scarcity and opportunity cost to find the best alternative in financial scenarios and their daily life situations. Students also have had the opportunity to conduct research to determine the possibilities for getting education and training need for the future career options and find the relevant opportunity costs. 

English 

Students have started the term off strong, delving straight into our analysis of 'The Hunger Games' by Suzanne Collins. They have begun to consider how characters and setting are used to influence the reader to form opinions about the societies within the text. 

We introduced the Creative Response Assessment Task, and students have begun to think about how they will achieve success in this task, this term. They unpacked the assessment rubric, and begun to generate a list of concepts and ideas that they would need to explore in order to demonstrate their understanding of the term's Statement of Inquiry, 'Authors can create texts which communicate the inequality of power and privilege across and within societies'.

Science

This term has started with the students reflecting on their prior learning for last term and the Chemistry unit they completed. They have written about what they enjoyed completing and which practical activities they have taken part in and what they learnt and posted these to their e-portfolio's. 

In Week 2 students were given a pre-test which introduced them to their new topic, Physics. The first aspect the students will be exposed to is Potential and Kinetic energy.