Junior School Report

Message from the Director of Learning

- Ms. Alice Paget

The Year 7 and 8 students are now part way through their second semester electives for 2019. It has been great to see the junior school students taking on board the feedback they received in their Semester 1 reports and implementing positive learning behaviours in their classes. Students have the ability to make maximum progress with changes in their learning behaviours. This includes the effort they put in, their behaviour, and their ability to meet deadlines, use class time effectively and complete homework on time. 

Well done to all junior school students who have now completed their Course Selection for 2019. Studying a broad range of subjects in the junior school is an important process in making an informed decision with their electives and pathway choices through their secondary school journey. Both Year 7 and 8 had the opportunity to choose their iCreate selection, and the Year 8 students selected an elective for next year as well. 

The course selection process has played an important reminder for students in ensuring they are regularly checking their emails and Compass to ensure they are meeting all required deadlines, such as submitting their subject preferences on time. Please encourage your child to get into a daily routine of checking their email and Compass. Setting up these routines is vital in their journey through secondary school and beyond.

Over the next few weeks we have Literacy and Book Week, as well as Numeracy Week. This is a great opportunity to get involved in interactive lunchtime activities. Also, we have the Junior School Social coming up on the 10th September, 5:30pm - 8:30pm, in Balook. Keep your eye on Compass for more details!

Ms. Alice Paget

Wellbeing theatre performance:

Sticks & Stones

On 22nd July, Brainstorm Productions (an educational theatre company), came to present a student wellbeing program, ‘Sticks & Stones’, for all Year 7 and 8 students.

Sticks & Stones is a fearless exploration of violence and aggression and its devastating consequences. The production encouraged our students to re-think their views about violence, abuse and controlling behaviour. The performance was followed by an after-show discussion that examined students' attitudes, challenges stereotypes and aimed to breakdown any pre-conceived ideas about violence being acceptable.

Sticks & Stones is part of our student wellbeing curriculum in the junior school at Westall Secondary College. The program has been developed in consultation with teachers, psychologists, as well as real-life student experiences. The program is designed to provide students with positive and useful tools that they can use in their everyday lives.

Year 8 Study Skills

Kick Start incursion

On the 2nd of August, all Year 8 students took park in a workshop on study skills run by Elevate Education. The workshop broke down some of the fundamental study skills required in secondary education, including:

• Dynamic reading (pulling out the key points of a text and summarising)
• Note taking (extracting key ideas into an organised set of notes)
• Conceptual learning skills (breaking information down into relevant parts)
• Independent learning (what it is and how to do it effectively)

Elevate education is run by university students, who have recently faced and aced secondary school themselves. The Year 8 students connected with the presenters who got them thinking about effective study skills from a fellow student’s perspective.

The feedback from students was extremely positive, with most commenting on the most important thing they learnt being ‘how to scan information and create effective notes’.

Ms. Alice Paget

Year 7 and 8 Visual Art: Hair Art

Students in Year 7 and 8 designed 'Hair Art' using the art elements of line and shape. The constraints of the art work was to use a black fineliner and texta to create contrasts of linear and bold areas in the composition. Students used self-portraits and images of friends for the face. A splash of colour was added to highlight a focus area in the work.

Students demonstrated incredible talent throughout the process!  Congratulations to the young budding artists.

Ms. Helen Ifandis

Art Coordinator

Junior Literacy

This term, all the Junior Literacy classes have been reading and learning about the book, Trash. We have been writing journals and pretending that we are one of the characters in Trash. We have also been drawing and creating storyboards of our favourite part in the book. At the end of Term 3, we will be watching a movie version of Trash and writing an analytical text response about the themes in the book. (SPOILER ALERT!) The book is about three friends that are poor and live on a trash site. The boys find a bag full of a lot of money, and get chased by police everywhere they go, trying to solve a mystery about a corrupt Senator who steals money from the poor.

Pauline Aererua (Year 7)