Year Seven

Welcome to Week 4

Well it's fair to say that we have had an extremely successful start to the term. The feedback from students has been positive and they're super keen to be here, share ideas and guide the direction of their learning. We have had 2 weekly "Leadership" sessions in which the students have been developing their problem solving skills and beginning to explore their involvement in world wide concerns. We will continue to establish this program with the intention of acting on some solutions as group projects.

English

Year Seven English has begun extremely well, with all five classes focused on establishing expectations around book work, class interaction and vocabulary development. 

Students have engaged in unpacking synonyms and antonyms through the word of the week, completed a parts of speech hunt and have begun to explore the persuasive text genre. They may have even been “Rick rolled” last week as part of their learning. Ask them about the Rick Astley parody they watched.

Within a primary school setting, English is separated into Reading, Writing and Speaking & Listening lessons with a large portion of the week devoted to each. Within our Secondary setting, these areas are all combined under the English umbrella with four hours a week allowed for this. We are extremely lucky that English is connected to Humanities where we support the learning with English strategies and the Humanities content within English lessons. In the coming weeks, students will engage in their first ‘Interdisciplinary Unit’ combining their knowledge and skills from English and Humanities within a personal inquiry.

We look forward to sharing more English news with you in the coming weeks but for now, here is a review session with Vanessa and Thasneem. 

Wood Technology

Over the past 2 weeks in Wood Technology, we have been looking at the hazards prevalent in the Wood Tech room, what injuries can be caused by these hazards and how we can minimise serious injuries by removing these hazards. We have also begun learning about various hand saws, in particular the Tenon Saw and how to operate them correctly and safely. This week we, are looking the various types of hammers, their different uses and how to correctly and safely, to create our first project.

The classes are all excited to begin using these tools and, for some, experiencing them for the first time.

Humanities

So far in humanities the students have been establishing some fundamental concepts to prepare for their upcoming interdisciplinary unit on the freedoms and responsibilities of citizens in Australia’s democracy. We have explored humanities as a subject by brainstorming what will be included in the curriculum, the definitions for civics and citizenship and the concepts of morality and ethics.  Below is a personal reflection written by Jahzarriah and Kalyen of 7B.

"During the time span of 4 weeks, we have been learning and taking part in the subject ‘Humanities’. Humanities is a core subject, relating to history. Both of us have gained an amount of knowledge about the topics that are in the subject itself, and we are furthermore investigating and educating ourselves about issues that have happened and are happening around the world currently. Throughout one of the lessons, we had grasped an understanding of opinions, and understood that others can have dissimilar opinions compared to ourselves, and that we’d still have to respect them either way, even if we disagree. We had also learnt about civics and citizenship, where we learnt about the rights of a human being, freedom, traditional gender norms, etc. Both of us have enjoyed this subject and will continue to work hard and study more about Humanities, since it’s our favourite subject." 

Music

In Year Seven Music, our students have been exploring the various Periods of Music (Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern) and testing the concept that Music is influenced by society.  

In their inquiry, the students considered what was happening within various areas of society at the time the composer created the musical piece.  These areas included government, religion, fashion, visual arts, available instruments, and other world events.

I must congratulate all the students for the balanced and principled approach they have exhibited in the classroom.   I must also thank Lily from Year Seven who created the wonderful musical banner (shown above).   Lily created this banner specifically for our Schoolbox page, demonstrating a convergence of Performing and Visual Arts.

Food Technology

Last week we started our Cookie Cookbook unit with the all-time favourite choc-chip cookie. This week we are making some variations on the classic recipe; some groups will be baking double choc-chip cookies, and others choc-chip monster cookies. Each week we will be focusing on a different aspect of theory ranging from Health and Safety, to food science, to the design process.

Hopefully, some of their cookies make it home for their families to try! We’ve only had one batch of burnt cookies so we’re going well so far!