Student Excellence & Enrichment Program

It has been an amazing year of opportunity for students at Mornington Secondary College and we were so happy to be back on Campus for a full term in Term 1 this year.

As part of the Mornington SC Student Excellence and Enrichment Program, students have been given opportunities to extend and develop their talents, interests, and abilities in all areas.

In Term 1, selected students participated in the Victorian High Ability Program for English and Maths. This program runs every term and students in the VHAP English Stream work with students across the state exploring Hope in Dystopian times extending their strengths in interpreting and analysing literature and ideas in society. The VHAP Maths Stream encourages students to develop their problem-solving skills through real investigations into Mathematical theories and problems.

In partnership with the Young Australians Best Book Awards (Yabba) Council and the Department of Education, Mornington SC students have also been joining in for Virtual Author Sessions or YABBA Talks with authors including authorstrator (author and illustrator) Andrew Plant and will join in with Gregg Dreise on May 24th 2022. Students have loved learning the craft of creative writing and illustrating to further develop their talents.

In a world-first, the Victorian Space Science Education Centre has installed a radio telescope at its Tallarook Observatory for use by school students. This is the only radio telescope in the world exclusively for school students and Mornington Secondary College students will be engaging with this radio telescope on May 26, 2022, for our Radio Astronomy Event searching and mapping objects in our Universe.

Showing our community values our students will also be building some solar lights for children who experience energy poverty in our SolarBuddy STEM Project on May 23rd as part of Gifted Awareness week. Students will be writing letters and assembling lights to send across the world to help others.

Students are also given the opportunity to join in the Future Problem-Solving Global Problem Solving and Community Problem Solving Challenges. In this term, some Year 10 students with some support from other year levels, plan to investigate how to improve our recycling and waste systems at the school to improve student knowledge of small differences we can make to improve the world’s environment.

Students in Years 7, 8, and 9 are also participating in the Victorian Coding Challenge and the Skills Village Pilot Project learning coding in Python to solve problems and working with Minecraft Education, Scratch, and using other coding and technology applications to develop creativity, problem-solving solutions to develop their critical thinking abilities, teamwork, and collaboration skills. Students have enjoyed participating in engaging and challenging Maths Games Days at our school run by the Maths Association Victoria.

We constantly have new enrichment opportunities available across the school and more details can be found on Compass or by contacting Mornington Secondary College’s High Ability Practice leader Rebecca Stroud at Rebecca.Stroud@education.vic.gov.au

Rebecca Stroud

Student Excellent and Enrichment