Year 8 Character Retreat

In conjunction with the Religious Education Curriculum in Year 8, the students attended a retreat experience run by the 27:7 Middle School Ministry group titled - Masterpiece of Creation.

The day comprised of a series of interactive sessions including group discussions, games, video clips, reflection and prayer that brought to light God's wonderful creation. Students were directed to reflect on the pinnacle of creation as humanity, with themselves being a precious and unique creation that is 'fearfully and wonderfully made'. The students also focussed on their responsibility as 'stewards' of creation. The concept of stewards was discussed as someone who is given the responsibility to care for a precious gift of God's creation-

the greatest gift of creation being our own life- so we are called to be stewards of our own life and use our gifts to bring joy in our own life and the lives of those around us.
Following from this- we are called to be stewards of the all humanity as the pinnacle of God's creation
And lastly, we are called to be stewards of the rest of creation

To enable students to appreciate their responsibility of stewardship, they were given a seed in some soil to look after and nurture to produce fruit, using this as an analogy to encourage them to nurture their own gifts and bring them to fruition.

Year 8 Pastoral Session “One decision can change your life”

Last week the Year 8’s took part in a presentation from an Ex-Navy SEAL who spoke to the cohort about how “One decision can change your life.”

Chandler Comerfold was assigned to SEAL Team One in San Diego, California. SEAL Teams are the Navy’s primary special operations force and the acronym SEAL stands for Sea, Air and Land, which are the environments in which all SEAL Teams operate.

Chandler’s presentation was based around a true story in which a movie was made in 2014 called “Lone Survivor”. Chandler’s best friend and room-mate was heavily involved in this mission and unfortunately lost his life in the battle.

Chandler’s message was strong and clear that as Year 8 students they need to start to train themselves now in making the right decisions, because before too long they will be faced with life changing ones that could negatively impact their lives. Playing “fortnite” instead of doing homework, copy and pasting someone else’s work from Google instead of writing it themselves are all simple decisions they can make, but by choosing the right one now, students are training themselves to deal with more difficult ones in the future. It won’t be long, if it has not happened already, students will be asked to get in a car with someone who has been drinking, offered drugs or try to be pressured into something deep down they know is wrong.

The Year 8’s asked Chandler some thought-provoking questions which demonstrated their understanding of the presentations theme. The challenge I put to them is to try and implement this into their daily lives.

Personal Project Exhibition - Tuesday 4 September

The Personal Project comes to its culmination this term and students need to complete their project, report and exhibition set up. At the end of Term Two the students were involved in four well used periods of preparation for their report writing and exhibition preparation. More details of the project can be found on the Year 9 Portal in Seqta.

Students have all been allocated a Staff Supervisor to assist them to stay on track with their project and to offer advice and support. Most students have met with their supervisors twice already, with another meeting encouraged in the first few weeks of term. Students are welcome to make as many supervisor meetings as they feel they require to get the support they deem needed, especially leading up to the exhibition and report due date.

Personal Project Set Up - Monday 3 September

Personal Project Exhibition - Tuesday 4 September

Personal Project Clean-Up - Thursday 6 September

Year 9 Pastoral Program

During Period 3 on Monday 30 July the Year 9 Pastoral Period was run by a number of Year 9 teachers. The emphasis of this session was the Aspect: Social Development and focussed on Bullying. The Year 9’s worked through activities and information that discussed the Common Ground we all have and how we can find positive attributes in each person we are asked to work with, sit with or collaborate with. We discussed what bullying is, the causes of bullying, the types of bullying and particularly focussed on cyberbullying as this is one of the four most common types of bullying encountered by our children in today’s society.

Within this weeks session the students were asked to identify some of the concerns they have that are causing them stress and are often the basis of bullying. A number of these were: growing up and all of the insecurities that come with this change in their lives, the opposite sex and relationships, gossip, peer pressure, study, judgement from others and expectations. The College encourages parents to discuss these concerns with their children and to seek assistance with these matters from the College ICT department or College Counsellors where necessary.

Students were also made aware of a number of organisations where they can seek assistance:

Kids Helpline

1800 55 1800

Headspace

Beat the Bullies website

Born This Way Foundation

Bullying is becoming more and more frequent among today’s youth with mean, hurtful behaviour that occurs repeatedly in a relationship with an imbalance of power or strength. Open discussion is one of the keys to empowering our children to prevent and stop bullying.

Cyberzine: The pros and cons of location services

You may wish to access resources from the Office of the eSafety Commissioner

NAPLAN ONLINE – School Readiness Test

You may have heard that NAPLAN Online was introduced in 2018, with 274 Western Australian schools participating. Our school will be transitioning to NAPLAN Online in 2019.

NAPLAN online will provide better assessment, more precise results and faster turnaround of information. Your child’s results will be returned to the school faster, within a few weeks rather than a few months.

This trial, called the School Readiness Test (SRT), will enable us to assess our technical readiness to implement the new online assessments. In addition, it will give us a chance to try out the new national online assessment platform in a real-life classroom environment

During August 2018, students in Years 7 will participate in a trial of the assessment platform, by undertaking two online readiness tests that include examples of the new NAPLAN online questions. Each test will take about 45 minutes to complete.

Participating in this trial is important as it will help us ensure we have adequate internet connectivity, and whether students have access to sufficient number of devices for NAPLAN Online testing. The readiness test has not been constructed to assess curriculum knowledge, but rather to provide students with an opportunity to experience the types of questions that will be included in the new online assessments. As such, reports will not be provided.

Participation in the SRT is a key step to ensuring a successful NAPLAN online experience in 2019.

Student Success - Year 8/9 boys AFL football

The Year 8/9 boys AFL football team had a great win on Wednesday 8 August in their Inter-district semi-final, turning the tables on CBC Fremantle who beat us in the qualifying rounds. The final score was 4.9 33 to 1.3 9.

Av�԰� opened up a lead in the first half with some impressive team play and then defended solidly against a gale force wind to finish with the win.

It was a very even performance all over the ground, but some of the best players on the day included Charley Wehr, Luke Yeo, Jack Garland-Dixon, Ben Cutri, Jacob Santaromita, Luke Chapman, Jackson McManus and Kobe McMillan.

They move on to play the grand final of the Eagles Cup against Prendiville this Thursday.

Av�԰�

Middle School News