Humanities Domain Update

Term 4 2021

The return to the classroom saw our Domain try to take advantage of opportunities for our students to connect with the school and their local community, as well as recognise issues in the modern world and remember the contributions of others in years gone by.

The green economy is an ever growing and discussed issue in the news, and this year marked the third year of documentary making for the ‘Economics of Waste’ Unit in our Year 8 curriculum. Through the study of current environmental issues through the lens of economics, the students apply their understanding to the creation of a documentary style film in their classes. Unfortunately, for the second year running, the students we unable to take part in ‘Expo’ part of this unit, which is the creation of stalls related to their environmental topic. Nevertheless, despite the restrictions provided by Covid and, in part, remote learning, students in many classes were still able to collaborate in the making of the documentary. There were a variety of approaches taken by each class, from a narrative, David Attenborough style documentary, to pieces of work that involved contributions from as many of the students in the class as possible. The key aim of the documentary was to persuade the objective judges, Miss Slade and Mr Price, that their environmental issue was worth changing our daily habits for. The documentary that was judged to be the most persuasive this year was M8.2 – congratulations to all the students and to Mr Kelleher who clearly motivated his students to produce a fine piece of work, and thank you to all the teaching team for making the documentary award possible.

At a similar time to the ‘Economics of Waste’ Unit in Year 8, preparations for ‘Remembrance Day’ were in the forefront of our minds. We were fortunate enough to be asked to contribute videos of First World War poetry readings for a local community effort to commemorate those who have served the nation’s armed forces. In addition, whilst we could not necessarily have all the students in the same place respecting the traditional minute’s silence as part of ‘Remembrance Day’, we did manage to ensure that every student in each classroom had a recording of the Last Post music (performed by Gus Morrison) and that teachers provided some context of the significance of the commemoration prior to the observation of the minute’s silence. There was also a live performance of the Last Post by Mr Jones that some students and staff were able to attend. Despite all the hardships students have gone through this year, it truly was fantastic to see students at Elisabeth Murdoch College make the effort to pay their respects to those who have served their country. 

I would like to thank everyone involved in the organisation of both the poetry readings and Last Post event in school, with specific acknowledgement for the contributions of Matt Jones, Gus Morrison, Jasmine Wilson, Dakota Clancy, Charli Prentice, Teagan Shaw and Tori Shadlow.