Middle Years

Year 7 Orientation Day

131 keen, eager and mostly nervous Year 7 students joined us last Friday for their first official day of high school. The Orientation Day incorporated the first of several Endeavour Way Days the students will take part in this year. The day was designed to settle some nerves and start to develop a strong class and Year 7 culture. This is also a great day for students to learn some things about their new classmates and teachers.

This year's Orientation Day was extra special considering the Year 7 students missed out on their Transition Day at the end of 2020, due to COVID-19. Fortunately no-one got lost on the day as we gave the students an extremely quick tour of Endeavour College.

The Endeavour Way sits at the very heart of our College culture and is by its nature a restorative approach to pastoral care. Restorative Practice includes a strategy which is referred to as ‘circle time’, when our students and their teachers sit together in circles and work through structured game-based and thinking activities.

After a day of immersion into the Endeavour Way, our newest students are well and truly part of our community. As they settle into the new routines of high school, they do so with the strength of our values supporting them: Love, Courage, Forgiveness and Hope.

Rod Dissel

Year 7 Year Level Leader

Year 8 Orientation Day: The Amazing Race

Two months of holidays… Sounds long, but it passes in a blur and the first day back to school may as well be the best day this term. 

The day started off with collecting your boarding pass, designing a team uniform and cheer. The teachers said that chanting the cheer would earn you extra points, but I doubt that many groups actually chanted while walking around. For instance, our group didn’t. 

After recess break, we met up at the Anzac Pavilion and began the ‘race’ part of the Amazing Race. Each team lined up, and holding a rope, paraded around Mawson Lakes in search of the landmarks and places, sign posts and benches. The team who collected the most points by the end of the game was the winner. 

Aside from the outdoor games, there was the classic Minty wrapper challenge. Our group found a loophole in the rules, because they stated that ‘you could only use the wrappers’. So we cut up the packaging of the plastic bag and all of the minty wrappers. Call it cheating? No, not really. Other groups were doing it too!

Xixi Chen

Year 8 Student