Year Eight 

Outdoor Education

The Year Eight Outdoor Education students have settled in nicely to their new elective. We started the semester learning about each other, their goals, fears, what motivates them, and any future physical challenges they wish to achieve. We created a warm, safe environment for the students to feel they are able to take risks and face their fears as a team. 

We have had the opportunity to learn about Risk Assessment in various outdoor scenarios as we will be venturing to the great outdoors very soon. The students have started writing their own Risk Assessment for an imaginary excursion.

The students have had an introduction to basic First Aid. This has allowed them to be aware of situations where First Aid is required and they are able to discuss how to apply these skills into various scenarios.

Kelleigh Evans

Visual Art

As we welcome back the students in the Year Seven and Eight Electives, students in Visual Art have started to show their prior learning through their first project.  Students have been consolidating their knowledge of the Elements and Principles of Art and Design, and have created samples to demonstrate their skills.  Students are working towards creating an Exploding Book for their first assessed unit of work.  We started by unpacking the different Elements and Principles and then looked at how artists use these, in combination, to create an effective art piece.  In the coming weeks, students will finish and assemble their work.

They have demonstrated how being a risk-taker allows them to experiment with different mediums and designs.  

Food Technology 

In the first session of Food Technology, the Year Eight students revised and learnt more about hygiene and safety in the kitchen, and revisited the Design Process we use in preparing food.  The students re-familiarised themselves with the Food Technology room, where they explored the workings of a kitchen and had an introduction to fire safety.

The students were given a design brief to research and cook a special breakfast using eggs, spinach, and milk. The student had the opportunity to order extra ingredients to enhance and expand their dishes. Some of the dishes that the students made were omelettes, pancakes, smoothies, poached eggs with avocado, and breakfasts muffins.

Over the course of the term the students will be developing their knife skills in chopping, slicing, and dicing. They will learn about the different types of knives and their uses. Students will practice different techniques for cutting different types of ingredients, such as vegetables, fruits, and meats. Safety when handling knives is paramount, and we will be be continuously reviewing how to safely handle and store knives.

Financial Literacy

The Year Eight students have had a successful start to the year. Over the last month, students have investigated their financial personalities and what their strengths and weaknesses are when dealing with money. This will help them make better saving and spending decisions. We explored the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timeline) goal-setting process and set short- and long-term goals, as well as creating a budget planner. 

We identified some ways to save money and worked out how long it would take to reach saving goals and the steps to take to put the plan into actions.

Following our discussion with spending, saving and budgeting, we budgeted the monthly costs to live and work in Melbourne for two different financial situations. Students worked in groups and researched the costs of rent, food, transport, utilities, etc. Students have compared the luxury lifestyle 'Budget A' and saver lifestyle 'Budget B', and completed a final budget with the options most suitable to them and they were asked to justify their decision. At the end of this project, students presented their findings and shared their self-reflections in a group. Students were also provided feedback from their peers and teacher. 

Here are some students’ work and reflections from the past month: 

Angie TAM & Adini WEERASINGHE

Jennifer RICHMOND & Nicole TAY

Vanessa MOCKO & Lareb MUHAMMAD JURIAL

Wood Technology 

This Term, Year Eight Wood Technology students have been exploring health and safety in the Wood Technology room. Year Eight students have been learning to identify hazards and their potential risks and how to prevent injury to ourselves and others. They have also explored the purpose and importance of safety signs in a work environment while also creating their own designs to display in the Wood Technology room. 

In the coming weeks, students are beginning the process of constructing their products for the term, a Resin Art Serving Board. Students will use the Design Process to plan, produce and evaluate their products and practice the skills of laminating timber together without the use of hardware.  

Mr. Mernik 

Robotics and Coding

This year, Saltwater College is expanding the 'CS in Schools Computer Science Program' to cater for the Year Eight cohort. Students are learning about various data types, including strings and integers. They are practising converting strings to integers, and applying various mathematical operations in their programs. Students are using “if”, “elif” and “else” statements to write programs that respond in different ways to user input.

The Year Eight program runs for a full semester, allowing students to investigate Robotics and Coding in greater depth. In this intermediate course,  students will connect hardware, principally micro:bit microcontrollers, enabling users to interact with student projects in novel and exciting ways.

Music

Students in Year Eight Music have spent the last several weeks exploring eight key elements of music. These are fundamental concepts of music such as ‘rhythm’, ‘melody’, ‘pitch’, ‘tone’ and so on. Most of us have an idea what these words are but often they are used incorrectly. 

This exploration has coincided with identifying these elements within music of various genre and cultural origins, to see how universal these concepts are in practise. 

As students move towards Term Two, they will be composing and producing their own scores and soundtracks. It is important that they can negotiate by using the metalanguage contained within these elements. 

Music has an indisputably important role in all our lives. Regardless of future vocation, mastery of the metalanguage of music is essential knowledge that will equip them with the ability to understand and analyse music in a detailed and sophisticated way.