Junior School News

With the change back to remote learning for our Junior School Learners it is important to remember to look after our mental health, our physical health and our emotional health. Try to be active every day, speak up about any concerns or worries you have and focus on the positives – there are always positives to be found. 

Year Level Coordinators are here to help with any concerns and can assist students to work through these. There is also the wellbeing email students can choose to access. We are so thankful to have such a supportive community around us at this time and want to congratulate everyone on the transition back to remote learning. 

We look forward to seeing all our students’ smiling faces online, so if anything may impact on students’ ability to engage in learning, please let us know. 

Ry Mathieson

Junior School Leader

Year 7 Reflection Semester 1

My first 6 months have been amazing! It was hard at points in time like with everything that’s happened so far this year but it has still been incredible. First and foremost the best thing that has happened this year has been meeting and making new friends. We are all from different Primary Schools and there have been people from Primary School at GEC with me and that’s great but branching out and making all my new friends has been the best thing all year. 

Another incredible thing about High School is meeting so many new teachers and being able to learn things I never did in Primary School like: Science, History and Health. Meeting so many new teachers has been very rewarding in the sense that you can go and ask them for anything you need like help or advice. (Or something else like M&Ms, Mr Lou)!!!!

Transitioning from Year 6 to Year 7 at a completely different school was hard at the beginning because you go from being at the top of the school to the bottom in a few weeks. Having to move around so much through a big building was tricky but the hardest thing was leaving all of my close friends. Yes, I have lots of friends from primary school at GEC but it was so hard to realize they wouldn’t be there with me for the chapter of High School so we are hoping that we can all reunite and go to University together.

Ava Renton

Year 7

Year 8 Food Technology

Students put a great effort into their Food Technology classes last term while in isolation, here are just a few of the wonderful dishes created for an assessment task. We hope that students take on their online learning as a great experience this time, as they learnt so much in our last one; about their subjects and themselves. Stay positive.

Sue Rio and Daniel Lake

Year 8 Coordinators

Year 9 News

We had grand plans of including some really nice  reflections from students’ last remote learning experience in this newsletter, but before we could do it we’re back online again!

Well done to our Year 9s on a great start to remote learning again. We are impressed by your enthusiasm and motivation, and how you are taking the initiative to reach out and ask questions.

This term teachers are taking attendance every lesson for remote learning, so students should make sure to communicate to their teachers that they are at every class, and embrace this opportunity to participate and learn like when they are at school.

To do this some Year 9s might need a bit of help being organised and starting a routine. Some tips that might help are:

• set an alarm at every bell time on your phone/Chromebook so you can make it to the next lesson on time
• print your timetable (there’s another new one last week!) and have it on the wall next to you while you work
• spend 5 minutes at the end of the day writing down what work you need to finish in your planner

Some of you are probably still thinking about selecting subjects for next year and VCE. Unfortunately, we won’t be having an open night, but all the subject areas have made virtual displays of the options for you at GEC. Students can look at these on the Year 9 cohort Google Classroom, or during Year 9 Program, where they have also had the opportunity to have small group pathways counselling  last week.

Stay safe and practice good personal hygiene!

Jake Sherman and Parminder Kaur

Year 9 Coordinators