College News, 

Sports & Events

A huge congratulations to Aaliyah Frost of Acacia Year 8 for being shortlisted in the top 20 (Year 7-9 category) in this year’s Zart Art National Student Art Prize! This year’s set theme was ‘Our Celebration of Australia’. Aaliyah has won herself a $50 Zart Art & Craft voucher and currently has her artwork displayed on Zart Art’s website. Aaliyah made the effort to voluntarily enter this competition and it has certainly paid off! All of us at Keysborough College are SUPER proud of what Aaliyah has achieved! Below is a photo of the clay sculpture titled; ‘Classic Aussie Icons’ that Aaliyah created over two months and subsequently entered into the competition

       RoadSafe – Steer Right Program

The Year 11 students had a fantastic opportunity to participate in the online Road safety program – Steer Right. Due to remote 

learning RoadSafe developed an alternative program to our usual Fit 2 Drive program designed to increase students understanding of decision making and risk assessment as young road users. We cannot thank Roadsafe enough for providing our students 

with practical tips to reduce risky road situations, giving our students opportunities to reflect on how to stay safe and ways to get home and a chance to learn skills to look out for themselves and each other. 

Monash University Law Faculty invited our students to participate in a United Nations Convention which commemorated the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations.

The following three Banksia students attended the excursion virtually on Thursday August 26 and would like to share what they gained from this excursion with our College community. 

Year 11 students from Banksia campus participated in a highly interactive simulation of the UN General Assembly.  Allowing students to step into the shoes of UN ambassadors from countries around the world, discussing contentious global issues. With the aim being to find the best possible solution through dialogue, negotiation and multilateral diplomacy. Our students had a great experience representing the US, one of the few developed countries to be involved in the negotiations. The program encouraged students to develop their advocacy, collaboration, critical thinking and global citizenship.  Thank you to Ms Couroyannis who organised this very worthwhile opportunity for our students.

Melissa Williams - Yr 11 TTL Banksia campus

“It was truly fascinating, hearing about others opinions and concerns. We had the opportunity to research the US stance on Human rights and world aide, then we negotiated to try and get all of the United Nation countries the fairest outcome.”  Ovin Hearth - Yr 11 Banksia campus

“Our team decided we would try to be as strategic as possible, we agreed not to spend our foreign aid budget without assurance from the developing nation representatives that they would protect the human rights of women and children and set higher targets for reducing global emissions.” Kevin La – Yr 11 Banksia campus

Today’s virtual excursion to Monash University to participate in a model United Nations conference has been a really fun experience, for me but also for my other teammates. This experience gave me the opportunity to research more in-depth about specific topics and it was amazing to see how everyone from our school along with other schools attended this event to debate and negotiate their ideas on how the nations of the world can address food security, global warming and poverty. Overall, it was an interesting and new experience to be a part of. Sarah Ngo - Yr 11 Banksia Campus

Old Worlds, New Worlds and Other Worlds

Old worlds were filled dictators and traitors. It was a time when the world was still being mapped and every journey, every expedition meant a new discovery. The farther you sailed, the more treasures were found. Whether it be new flora to show people back home or fauna to describe as fascinating, it was something unseen. Then things changed. Lands were taken from people who had been there many years before and betrayal became a trend. This leads us to the new world in which technology thrives. Vampires seen in broad daylight, attached to screens that glow. No stone is left unturned, nothing is left a mysteryas  it is only a few taps away. Nothing is precious anymore, not gold and certainly not land. Why fight over the land when everything may fall apart anyway? We have destroyed the sun, the moon, the animals,the plants and ourselves, however one thing remains the same. We are still traitors. We have betrayed our home. We are the beasts in this new world. Life is better in the other worlds. Harmony, fairies, light andmusic. Everything is brighter and magical. Worlds exist in which there may be wizards casting spells uponfrogs, were wolves howling together at the moon and the undead looking for comfort and serenity. Worldsin which you can find true happiness. I believe they all exist somewhere. Somewhere better. 

Now I’d like you answer a question. Which worlds would you live in? Would you like to live old worlds in which you see that an innocent sense of adventure can become something resembling greed? Would you like to live in new worlds in which everything seems to be known and yet nothing is being done to heal the damage created by beasts? Or would you like to live in a world in which life is lived like a dream and where your every wish is granted? The choice is yours.

Year 9 Investigate

There is no doubt that remote learning has been extremely challenging for students across Victoria in Term 3. For our Year 9 students in Investigate, our normal inquiry based learning strategies have been difficult to implement online. However, as part of our latest Geography unit, the Year 9 team came up with a very novel way to keep learning as practical as possible.

One of the most popular units of work in Year 9 has always been the Biomes unit. In this unit of study we get the students to examine the topic of ‘Food Security’ and we look at where their food comes from and the different impacts on the environment. In studying this unit, we hope that students start to think about the different places they can source their food. 

The major assessment task for this unit of study involved the students creating their own meal (whether that be a breakfast, lunch or dinner) and studying where all of the different components of their food came from. The students developed their own inquiry question to research their meal and they were able to determine the impact their meal had on the environment (through the calculation of CO2 emissions). We hope that the Year 9 students enjoyed their time in the kitchen and as always, we were very impressed with the high quality of work produced by our students. J 

Below we have included some of the delicious meals that Year 9 students cooked (although we believe some may have been sourced from Uber Eats!!) as well as the food components tables and inquiry questions that were developed.

Keenan Synnott, Year 9 Teacher Team Leader, Banksia Campus