Middle School News
Year 8 Pastoral Session – Respectful Relationships Revisited
Mr Simon Messer
Head of Year 8
Earlier in the Year 8’s took part in a pastoral session based on “Respectful Relationships”. We engaged in some thought-provoking conversation about how poorly we can make someone feel through our actions and words and the impact on our relationships.
Last week we revisited this topic. Working in small groups within our Homerooms, students discussed current issues before brainstorming suggestions about what they believe are important ingredients for developing and maintaining positive, healthy and respectful relationships.
Some of the common ingredients of the year group are shared below:
· Self-control
· Honesty
· Trust
· Listen
· Empathy
· Tolerance
Using their ingredients each group developed a promotional poster based around the importance of Respectful Relationships. Our task now is continue these important conversations and bring these words to life through actions in our own lives.
Year 9 and 10 - The QUEST Brainways Competition
Head of Academic Excellence
Filipa Carvalho
On 12 and 13 November, two teams of Year 9 and 10 students represented Av Christi College in the QUEST Brainways competition for Gifted and Talented students held at the University of Western Australia. On day one, the students were presented with new fundamental concepts in Science, Humanities and Mathematics including string theory, dystopia and calculus, respectively.
On day two, students were given a task for each of these areas. In Science, students were expected to explain several properties of elementary particles like gluons and fermions. They had to describe these in first and second dimensions from different perspectives. They were also expected to design an experiment using an ukulele or a skipping rope whereby they were able to explain string theory. For Humanities, the task involved designing and creating a dystopian text about a dystopian world. Students needed to provide the backstory, design an economic system, choose a type of government and write a short narrative about the main protagonist. The Mathematics challenge involved comparing derivatives and integrals. Teams had to create a process to find the circumference and surface area of a leaf and link this process to derivatives and integrals. The students found the topics and tasks extremely challenging, fun and rather interesting.
Congratulations to both teams who had a go and in particular, well done to Edison Foo, Thomas Nicholls and Nicholas Ng for winning first place in Mathematics and Science and second place in Humanities. Overall this team came first and will be representing the state at the finals on 8 December which is hosted in Queensland. We wish them all the best. Thank you to Mr Matthews for accompanying the students on the day.
Careers & Courses Information
Rachel Burke
CAREERS CO-ORDINATOR
Curtin University Science Experience with Engineering 2018
Calling all Year 9 students: The 2018 ConocoPhillips Science Experience is four days of engaging hands-on science and engineering lab sessions, expert speaker presentations, information on studying at university and careers in science and engineering, engrossing challenges, and more. Explore the fields of Agriculture, Medical Science, Chemistry, Spatial Science, Molecular Genetics, Robotics, Physics, Maths and Chemical Engineering. You can watch the video . Places are still available, please click to apply online now.
When: 6th, 7th,10th and 11th December 2018
Where: Curtin University, Bentley Avus
Cost: 4-day program $260 (includes GST)
US & UK Uni Basics Webinar - Applying, Funding and Academic Benchmarks
Saturday 8 December
Summer is the perfect time to learn how to get into top US and UK universities! Register for this free webinar which will go through all the basics including 12 and 24 month application timelines, the expected costs and the academic benchmarks of studying at the best universities in the world!
This webinar is perfect for Year 9-12 students, parents and Career Advisors.
