Curriculum

Students from Year 7 have once again returned to the world of Remote Learning. Firstly, we would like to congratulate students for their dedication and resilience towards Remote Learning in Term 2. In Term 3, there are some minor changes to how remote learning will operate. 
 
In order to manage the workload and support the wellbeing of students, weekly learning tasks have been divided under the headings of Entree, Main and Dessert. The work expectation for all students is that they will complete 1 hour of independent work for each subject and submit what they complete within this time. For most students, this should allow them to complete both the ‘Entree’ and ‘Main’ tasks. For those students who are particularly capable in the subject, quick to complete tasks or who wish to challenge themselves further, they can also complete the ‘Dessert’ task.The dessert task is deemed to be more challenging and involve higher order thinking.  

Students will have scheduled virtual lessons for every subject they are enrolled in. Students will find their virtual lessons on their calendar in Microsoft TEAMs. There have also been some minor changes to the weekly virtual lessons. All virtual lessons will run for 30 minutes and within the lesson students will be actively participating in the activities organised by the teacher. Students are also encouraged to use their camera to allow for greater interaction with the teacher. 

Parents, if you have any questions regarding the weekly Learning Tasks and/or virtual lessons please contact your student’s teacher through email, phone call or Microsoft TEAMs. 

English as an Additional Language (EAL)

The EAL program at Mooroolbark College supports students and families who speak a language other than English at home.  We provide both academic and communication support for families. 

The EAL team consists of Charlie Chaturapornkul (EAL Coordinator), Sarah Awi (Multicultural education aide – Hakha Chin) and Alisa Hammersley (EAL assistant). 

An EAL learner is defined as someone who has lived in Australia for less than 7 years, and their main language spoken at home is not English. At present we have 50 EAL learners, however, our support extends beyond this group to many more families in our school community. Support continues to even be available to students who have lived here more than 7 years.  

Our program runs an EAL Home Group once a week, which has moved to TEAMS during Remote Learning. This Home Group provides a place for students to request extra help, for staff to check in with students, and to give information to students about things happening in the school/community. 

Students are also given academic assistance through in-class support, differentiated curriculum and assistance with their homework when needed.  

Charlie Chaturapornkul

EAL Coordinator

English 

It is great to have all students back learning in one way or another! The English KLA has been working hard to emulate as much of the liveliness of a classroom as possible, albeit in a remote setting and the English teachers look forward to guiding students with their studies this term. 

We would also like to give a warm welcome to a new English staff member, Ms Leilani Foleti. It is lovely to have you on board!  

Here is a glimpse of what is happening in our classes now:  

After our return from Remote Learning in Term 2, Year 9 English students have been focussed on reading and exploring the novel ‘A Bridge To Wiseman’s Cove’. By popular vote, Liam Thompson became our reading celebrity and took us through the first half of the novel with riveting enthusiasm. We began to look at the themes that were arising in the novel and in response to the theme of loneliness, Holly Grant poignantly wrote ‘loneliness occurs when someone feels rejected by the world.’ Exploring the themes within the novel helped us to understand the characters, particularly Carl, the main character on a deeper level.  

9G English

Mia Sund 

Year 10 students have been busy, entering the world of comparative analysis through ‘Stand by Me’, directed by Rob Reiner, based off the novella ‘The Body’ by Stephen king; comparing this to the indelible Australian novel by award winning poet Steven Herrick ‘By the River’. In the last week of class, students focused on breaking down and analysing specific poems in ‘By the River’, presenting their findings to the rest of the class. Some students took the opportunity to create some fantastic PowerPoints, as well as a few stunning drawings to support their work. I would like to highlight the amazing work of Josh Kuszlaba and Darcy Travis in creating a highly engaging and well-represented presentation on the poem ‘The Pieman’.  

Liam Hope

Year 10 English Teacher 

Review: The Goonies 

This movie is an absolute classic and I believe it’s one of Spielberg’s best. We follow the kids’ adventure as they try to find One-Eyed Willy’s treasure while being chased by criminals who also want the treasure. The jokes which are made in the film will make you laugh! I give the movie 5/5 stars because of the engaging mystery and humour throughout the film. 

Tyler Charlton, Year 12 

 English Recommendations: 

• You’ve Gotta Start Somewhere (Podcast) 
• Fantastic Mr Fox (Film) Rated PG  
• The Bone Sparrow – Zana Fraillon 

Sarah Garnaut and Tyrone Ingham

English KLA Co-ordinators

Health and PE

If Learning in 2020 has taught us anything as a college community this year, it is that the students at Mooroolbark College are extremely resilient in adapting to new challenges and changes, as we begin Remote Learning for Term 3.  

With cameras given the go ahead, it has been fantastic to see students engaging and participating in a range of health and physical activity sessions from Yoga to Tabata with their peers in some of our online lessons. The feedback from students has been very positive, as they feel more connected with their peers and their teacher through the virtual classroom.  

Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, schools have been forced to postpone camps which can provide students with fun and exciting experiences which can stay with them for life, not to mention allowing them to make new friends and form meaningful connections with staff. Here at Mooroolbark College the HPE team decided that students should still get the opportunity to experience what it would be like to ‘virtually’ make it camp this year. So, we have created the ‘WHO CAN GET TO CAMP FIRST?’ challenge across all year levels 7-10. The challenge requires students to be work collectively and compete against their fellow classes to walk, ride or run to various locations around Australia including to Tasmania, Hahndorf in South Australia and Uluru in the Northern Territory. All these wonderful places represent just some of the amazing camps that are offered at Mooroolbark, we hope that we get to experience these places soon. May the best class win!  As an incentive, there are prizes and merits up for the taking. 

In addition, students will also be pursuing their own personal fitness goals and tracking their progress through a virtual diary, I am very excited to see how the students go at reaching their goals. Finding the motivation to complete their goals might be difficult especially in Winter, but I know the end results will be rewarding.  

With fitness challenges flooding our screens, we thought we would put our Year 9 students to the test with this Burpee Challenge. Below are the instructions of how to complete the challenge. If you’re game, give it a go and see how many Burpees you can get in 16 minutes. The highest we have recorded so far is 30! 

Stephanie Todd 

Head of Health and Physical Education  

Humanities

It’s been a great time to think about the places, events, stories, businesses, economies and laws that are the centre of our Humanities subjects.  We haven’t been able to cover all topics in the usual way, but it has given students the chance to explore and discover things around us and online which might have otherwise been missed. 

We couldn’t go to the Holocaust Museum, but students still gained great insight into the experiences of survivors and listened to many accounts.  In fact, we heard more accounts than previous years.  We couldn’t visit some of the biomes studied in Years 8 and 9, but we’ve been able to learn so much more through the use of spatial software and online information. 

Here are some recent highlights: 

• Year 11 History students have been busy studying the early years of the Cold War. This included practising exam-style responses, analyses of documents and speeches, and a loud performance of the song “We didn’t start the fire”. 
• Remote lessons in junior Geography have included exercises on the importance of water as a resource and the unique characteristics of mountain and volcanic environments. Year 7 students excelled at finding and discussing examples of water use around the home. 
• Year 9 Sustainable World students investigated grassland biomes, their unique biodiversity and why they are threatened in so many places. We travelled (in a virtual sense) to the outer northern and western suburbs of Melbourne to study relatively local examples. 
• Our book room/store room has been painted and carpeted. What was until recently an old, dusty space is now new and pristine. 

Chris Hanneberry 

Humanities KLA Leader 

Languages

Welcome to Term 3, 2020 of Languages at Mooroolbark College! We weren’t expecting to be locked down at this point, but we are determined to make the best out of the situation! Our KLA has used Week 1 of Term 3 to set up lessons and Learning Tasks designed to engage students and motivate learners to participate in the online components of the week’s work.  

To help the students complete the weekly Learning Tasks, a short Instructional Video will be recorded to help in this process. These videos will be posted in Learning Tasks and students will be shown in class how to find and use them.  Our learners will be given weekly tasks to complete in Education Perfect which prepare them for the Semester’s CATs. That gives the teachers the opportunity to give feedback and award Merit stamps on the class poster, in the manner we started in Term 2! 

What more can we say other than reinforcing, “What better place to be at the start of the term than in a Mooroolbark College Language class”? 

Library

Our school library has an excellent collection of free eBooks and audiobooks for you to enjoy! This lets us bring you more books than we can physically store in the library. If you can’t find the book you want at school, it may be in our digital collection 

• 24 hour access anytime, anywhere on any device without the need for an e-reader or kindle
• Confidential! 
• No other staff or students can see what you look at, borrow and read
• Adjustable and accessible.
• Adjustable text, font and colours means you can customise the eBook exactly how you want it. Our eReader platform is dyslexia friendly!
• Audiobooks 
• Listen to your favourite books in the car, on the bus or while exercising  
• Free!! 
  This collection is free for all staff and students 

We have also recently added a new Digital Wellness Collection to our eReader platform. This includes over 380 titles on mental health topics such as stress, anxiety and depression. This collection also celebrates neurodiversity with books and study tips for people with autism, ADHD, dyslexia and more! 

To log in select ‘Wheelers Books’ from the star menu on Compass and enter your Compass username and password when borrowing. 

We’d like you to jingle all the way to the library this July, and check out our exciting new books, even though it is not yet Christmas. They’ve been presented to you all so beautifully, that you won’t be able to wait until you have the chance to unwrap an exciting new story! 

We have an exciting new collection for all the number lovers out there. In summary, you’ll find the following on our shelves: “Alan Turing’s Biography” – he’s the one that broke the Enigma code; “Hidden Figures” – the true story of the women who worked for NASA; and “Two Trains Leave Paris” – full of word puzzles that you’ll need some maths ability to figure out!  

If fiction is more your thing, then we have some excellent new reads available that have just arrived, including some Du Maurier classics (for if you like something a bit Gothic), Stephen Fry’s “Mythos” (for lovers of Greek mythology) and Rick Riordan’s “Camp Jupiter Classified” (of Percy Jackson fame). The long awaited “Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”, of the ‘Hunger Games’ world has hit the shelves, as well as the third “Wings of Fire” graphic novel.  

Remember that we are here to help you find something that you will enjoy reading, so please drop in and see us for a recommendation!  

Prue Bon

Library Co-ordinator

Literacy

Book Review Competition 

Would you like to win an author visit and free books? Simply write a review of one of your favourite books from the Premier’s Reading Challenge list, and you could win! Entries must be less than 200 words and students can submit multiple reviews. All students who enter will also receive House points and a small prize. Further details and entry forms can be found by clicking the link below or by contacting Ms Garnaut via email/Teams. Good luck! 

Sample Book Review – Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan 

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to suddenly find out that you’re a demigod? Read Percy Jackson and you’ll find out!  

Rick Riordan captivates his teenage audience through an exciting storyline and vivid descriptions. His characters are described so expertly that it feels like you are sharing their experiences and have become part of their world. He draws on sarcasm and humour, which gives depth to the characters and makes them seem more relatable. The humour also balances out the catastrophic events that Percy has to deal with as part of his new life.  

Another impressive aspect of the Percy Jackson series is that, because it is based on Ancient Greek mythology, you’re also learning about history without actually having to study it! Luckily, the references to Greek Gods and mythological creatures are woven in so that they don’t disrupt the storyline, and in fact, they actually add to it. 

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is craving an exhilarating adventure and wants to be transported to another world. 

Sarah Garnaut 
Learning Specialist – Literacy  

Mathematics

So it’s back to Remote Learning for Mooroolbark College. We have hit the ground running in the Mathematics KLA; Week 1 of Term 3 has been filled with collaborative planning for Phase 2 and the welcoming back of our senior students. 

Taking on feedback from Remote Learning of last term, we have made some changes this time around. Year 7-10 students will be meeting with their Maths teachers twice a week for 30 minutes, where they will be asked to engage in a variety of activities which will challenge their measurement and geometry skills. Get your rulers ready! Your bedroom floor, dinner plate or family car tyres could be your next mathematical subject of investigation!  

In Year 7, we are adding an element of student responsibility and learning independence as each Year 7 student will be guided into selecting their own learning goals. They will then be spending some time each week working towards achieving their personal Maths goal.  

Numeracy tasks will still be available every fortnight and are optional for students to participate in to challenge their critical thinking and problem solving skills. These can be found in the Compass Learning tasks. 

During Term 3 Remote Learning we will again be running our virtual Maths Club ¾ so if you, or your son/daughter, needs some extra assistance in Maths please ask your Maths teacher to add you to the Microsoft Teams Meeting. This will run on Thursday afternoons and be a great opportunity to ask all the questions you like and get some extra help with your weekly Maths work. 

We are welcoming the new rules when using Microsoft Teams that cameras are now allowed. We think that this will make us all feel a little more connected and closer to feeling, as if we were in the classroom together. If you’re in doubt, the Mooroolbark College Polo shirt/jumper and the home office or kitchen table is the best setup for our students and teachers. We hope all students are feeling more comfortable and confident in this second phase of Remote Learning, as our teachers certainly are! 

Jade Hubben

Mathematics Co-ordinator

Music

Music News 

With the beginning of Semester 2, we again found ourselves working from home with Remote Learning.  While things may be a little different to our normal onsite schooling, music lessons are running as usual using TEAMS just like in other subjects.  It’s great to see our music students adapting so easily to this new way of learning, and hearing their progress during their weeks at home. 

Piano Exams 

At the end of Term 2, one of our piano students, Daniel Harrison completed his Grade 2 Modern Piano Exam.  These exams are usually run at an exam centre or studio, however students currently have the option to record their pieces and scales in a set amount of time and submit the recording via email for assessment.  These exams involve many months of practice and preparation, and it’s always wonderful to see our students’ dedication to their instrument and sitting the exam. 

Congratulations Daniel for achieving the Honours Award. What an amazing result which was obviously very well deserved! 

Lisa Gaudion 

Instrumental Music Coordinator 

Performing Arts

Well once again we find ourselves in remote learning mode. Whilst these are challenging circumstances we find ourselves in, I am pleased to report that all Drama classes have made a positive and enthusiastic start to the semester. If last term’s classes are anything to judge by, then I am looking forward to some high quality work! 

 
Jack Fowler Year 7

Whilst in lock down we were able to be flexible with the way students were able to present their work. As well as the traditional methods, students were able to record themselves reading Dreamtime stories, create animated and live action films of fractured fairy tales as well as producing informative PowerPoint presentations.  In the case of the Year 9s, they were also able to create characters, produce a script and film themselves performing Solo Monologues. 

Anabel Floyd Year7 

And just a reminder that our College Musical ‘The Addams Family’ is merely in hibernation! I hope our cast are taking this opportunity to know their scripts inside out. As soon as we can, we will resume rehearsals and we will need to recruit even more cast. So if you didn’t sign up the first time, grab hold of the next opportunity. It is going to be an amazing show! 

Peter Marz 

College Director, Senior Drama Teacher 

Science

Our very cute, resident turtles, Sheldon and Franklin received a fancy tank upgrade over the school holidays. They now have a lot more space to swim around in and are very happy about their new surrounds. 

Our students in Years 7 – 10 have settled back into Remote Learning with their weekly Science lessons. Year 7 students are busy “classifying” their wardrobes and other areas of their home. Year 8s are exploring the stages of digestion which include analysing what is occurring in their mouth as they chew on a slice of bread. Year 9s are developing their understanding of relationships within ecosystems and the impact human activity is having on the environment around them. 

Our VCE students have been busy onsite. In Unit 3 Biology they took their knowledge of the function of the different immune cells and applied to different characters from The Avengers. From ‘Hulk’rophages (Macrophages) engulfing foreign enemies to Cy-THOR-toxic T cells initiating apoptosis of host cells, students were able to make links and practical connections to remember this complicated aspect of the course in an engaging and fun way!  

Skye Jennings

Science Co-ordinator

Technology

In Technology, we had a small window of opportunity for students to get into the workshops and put their planning into action. Judging by the work which was completed and shown, the students were more than happy to be back. The Year 11 Product Design class had to modify an existing product and change its form and purpose. The bowl in the images used to be part of the seating which was removed over the Christmas holidays to make way for the locker relocation, as was the hat stand. 

The Year 10 Metalwork class was able to finish their hooks based on the designs which they created during Remote Learning, with many unique items being created. 

Remote Learning continues to challenge our students but I’m sure that the students will work well, knowing that once it is all over they will be able to return to school and get their hands back on to the tools. 

Andrew Dingey

Technology Co-ordinator

The Arts 

Recently, we welcomed back our senior Arts students to on-campus learning, while our 7-10 students returned to Remote Learning. It is an exciting time as we not only get to see our VCE Studio Arts, Media, Music and VCD students excel in the classroom, but thanks to the fact that students can now have their cameras on during Remote Learning, we also have so many fantastic opportunities to extend and expand on what we can do during our junior art, drama, music and VCD lessons. We can’t wait to see what amazing pieces of work are created throughout this semester. 

THE ARTS INSTAGRAM WORK 

This month’s Instagram Collage showcases the amazing work produced by the Year 11 Media class during Unit 1. Students were tasked with creating representations of superheroes in the form of a series of film posters. They all did such a fantastic job. Well done, everyone! You can check out more of our students amazing work at https://www.instagram.com/mooroolbarkcollegeofficial/ 

MEDIA FILM FESTIVAL – ENTRIES ARE NOW OPEN! 

Entries for Mooroolbark College’s 8th Annual Film Festival are now open and will close in early Term 4. Entries must tell a narrative, be appropriate for all audiences and contain no copyrighted material (including visuals or music/sounds). They can be completed by an individual or a team/group. 
Given the current circumstances, don’t forget that entries can also be animated – including digital animation and stop motion. 

The film festival will be held in Term 4 in a very special online format this year. 

For more details, please contact Mr Neil-Holland. 

Art Clubs

Both our on campus Art Club and our Virtual Art Club are back up and running. Ms D’Unienville will continue to run the on campus Art Club for our senior students on Tuesdays at lunchtime while Miss Bonne will run our Virtual Art Club via Teams on Thursdays from 1 to 1:30pm. Please contact Miss Bonne if you are interested in attending the Virtual Art Club. 

Matthew Neil-Holland 

The Arts Co-ordinator