LANGUAGES

Welcome back to school everyone! Whether it’s welcome back to our returning students or to school generally for our new Year 7s, we would like to extend our welcoming greetings to everyone.

We hope 2021 will be a return to normality. Mrs Henderson, Ms Jiang and I are very much looking forward to sharing our passion for languages and cultures as much as we can, so that our students can better appreciate the variety our world offers when we can travel freely again. We can’t wait!

General News:

If 2020 showed us one thing, it was that our faculty will adapt to challenges and find something positive regardless. One thing that has changed is that with Mooroolbark College having more broadly embraced Education Perfect (EP), we have made one CAT per semester wholly assessed through this platform. Most of our 2021 Language Learners have at the time of writing already accessed this powerful resource. Students will find TASKs to practise regularly before getting feedback on the follow-up PRACTICE TESTs. These Practice Tests are the foundation for completing the Online CAT later in the term. If any student or parent has difficulty accessing EP, please use the login guide posted in COMPASS RESOURCES entitled HOW TO GET INTO EDUCATION PERFECT. It shows users how to get onto EP in simple steps as shown in the example below.

If you still have trouble, please contact your teacher and mention which step you managed to get up to.

Events & Excursions:

As the Year 7 Barbeque has been cancelled, we will be getting students to sign up to our Friday Lunch EP Competitions in class. We’ll open up a room at lunch for students to earn double points!

Languages are currently looking into how we can run our end of Term 2 excursion to complement our Year 8 unit of work on food. Due to COVID19, we may not be able to run it as we have in the past.

Teaching & Learning:

Last week in Chinese, our Year 7 and Year 8 students made some amazing paper craft to celebrate the Lunar New Year of the Ox. They have created 3 dimensional (the Chinese character for spring) and used calligraphy brush pens for the door decoration artworks of the word (meaning all good luck). Not only are our Year 7s keen to learn Chinese characters by handwriting, but they are also very excited about sending new year greetings and messages in Teams. Almost all students have developed the basic skills of using a Chinese Pinyin keyboard and are able to type their words and phrases accurately! What a wonderful start to the new year. Can’t be prouder of our newbies.

Common Assessment Tasks (CATs) & more:

In Languages, as in all subjects, three CATs must be successfully completed to complete a semester’s work. We have posted our Assessment Guides in Compass Resources. In German students will complete one ORAL CAT (CAT 1), one WRITTEN CAT (CAT 2) and one COMPREHENSION CAT (CAT 3), which is the online CAT outlined above. Apart from that there is regular coursework that practises key skills for which students can collect points for Merit Certificates. Neat and well-organised book-work is one of these. Here is a sample of what a good Year 8 Title Page looks like: Congratulations Matthew Nimbs of Year 8!

We wish all our students and the wider school community all the best for 2021!

Jonas Bahlo
KLA Leader – Languages