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Mooroolbark College Newsletter – August 2021

13th August 2021

Our latest Mooroolbark College Newsletter is here!
 
The Mooroolbark College newsletters are an important form of communication for our school community.
Each newsletter contains a great deal of information about what is happening in the College including upcoming events and celebration of student success.
 
Enjoy the read…

In this Issue:

Upcoming Events

Next PRINCIPAL’S REPORT

PRINCIPAL’S REPORT

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Unfortunately, we find ourselves back in remote and flexible learning again.  The transition into this current lockdown has been challenging, with the suddenness of the move back into remote and flexible learning.   

The College is currently trialing a different approach to on line learning for our Years 7 to 10 students.  Upon our return to the College, we will be seeking feedback from staff, students and parents to see which structure best engages our students in their learning and provides connectedness to their peers. 

Home group is such an important way for our College to connect during remote and flexible learning, and all staff prioritise making this time each morning.  Starting each day with home group ensures students begins their day with routine.  Especially during this uncertain time, developing routines with young people is clearly linked to improving student wellbeing.  It is also a great way to connect with other students and have some fun.  I want to encourage all students to be in Home Group, on time everyday, while we are in remote and flexible learning. 

I know students are worried about missing key school social events such as Year 12 dress up days, socials, camps etc.  I want our students and parents to know that wherever we are able to, we will ensure these activities run at alternate times later in the year.  We don’t want any student to miss out on these great Mooroolbark College events. 

It is a credit to our staff and students that some many activities have continued in this virtual environment. 

  • Course counselling and course selection 
  • School Assessed Coursework for our Year 11 and 12 students so they do not find themselves behind when we return. 
  • Student Leadership meetings 
  • Daily lunch time activities for students 
  • Instrumental music lessons 
  • Tutoring 

Our student wellbeing team is always available to support students.  Our House Teams, Counsellors and Chaplain are contactable via Compass email, TEAMs messaging or simply by ringing reception on 9727 8100. 

I would like to thank all the Mooroolbark College Staff for their ongoing support of our students and their families.  It is in these challenging times that maintaining a community is so important.  Thank you also to the many parents and students who have reached out to me to pass on their thanks to our staff.  It is much appreciated. 

Keep safe and hopefully we will be back onsite soon. 

 

Regards 

Ann Stratford 
PRINCIPAL 

 

PreviousCover PageNext STUDENT WELLBEING

STUDENT WELLBEING

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With lockdown 5 done and dusted, it is nice to be back to our busy, noisy normal self. We are once again hearing stories from students about struggle and survival and resilience and almost universally students are saying “I am so glad to be back”. So now we focus on getting students back into a normal school routine of bells, uniforms, settling down in class, renewing friendships, and homework. The educational specialists and psychologists tell us that routine, consistency and familiarity are the most important things when the world around us is topsy turvy.   

And as always, we want to remind you, that your child’s mental health and successful transition back into “normal covid” schooling is our priority and we want to continue to provide quality welfare support to our students. If you have any concerns at all about your child then please contact your child’s coordinator or myself and chaplain Gill Van Der Ende. We are available to parents via phone or text. Your child can also contact us directly by knocking on the door of our office. We are here to support you. 

 

John Nichol
Student Wellbeing Coordinator

 

WELLBEING AND WELFARE SUPPORT SERVICES

24 Hour Emergency
Kids Helpline Counselling service for people aged between 5 and 25 24 hours/7 days 1800 551 800 

www.kidshelpline.com.au

www.kidshelpline.com.au/young-adults

(email, web chat)

LifelineCrisis support, suicide prevention and mental health support services24 hours/7 days
www.lifeline.org.au

13 11 14

Beyond BlueInformation and support for all ages to promote optimal mental health.24 hours/7 days1300 224 636 

www.beyondblue.org.au

(Chat online or email)

E headspaceProvide mental health support for young people aged 12–25Phone: 

10pm – 1am

Online counselling: 1pm – 1am

1800 650 890 

https://headspace.org.au/eheadspace/

Yarra Ranges Youth TeamProvide support and advice to young people 9294 6716 

1300 368 333 or 9294 6905

www.yarraranges.vic.gov.au/Community/Youth

youth@yarraranges.vic.gov.au

InspiroFree youth, teen, young adult and family counselling 9738 8801 

or visit https://www.inspiro.org.au/
for more information

Parent lineSupport for Parents and carers with children from birth to 18 years8am–midnight/7 dayswww.parentline.com.au 

13 22 89 

1300 30 1300

EDVOSFamily violence service in Melbourne’s eastern metropolitan regionMon-Fri 9am-8pm 

Sat 9am-5pm (phone or email) 

03 9259 4200  

edvos@edvos.org.au

https://www.edvos.org.au/

No To ViolenceSupports for men who use family violenceMon – Fri 8am-9pm 

 

 1300 766 491

 

PreviousPRINCIPAL’S REPORTNext RED HOUSE

RED HOUSE

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The Red House spirit has continued strong this year. We have had some outstanding achievements. Firstly, we are currently leading the tally board for the house with the most merits received. Congratulations to all students who have received merits and let’s keep them coming! Remember you get merits by displaying our school values. This could be picking up someone’s books they dropped (Compassion), picking up rubbish in the yard (Respect), doing the high beam in PE after being too nervous to give it ago (Resilience) and having all your equipment for class (Endeavour).  

These merits all go towards receiving a values award. The following students have received a values award in Semester 1: 

Endeavour 

  • Hayley Lamb 
  • Jess Voigt 
  • Justin Villacis 
  • Saraya Landy 

Resilience 

  • Mikaya Mcinnes

Respect 

  • Aisake Haukinima 
  • Chelsea Kaniewski 
  • Jake Kinman 
  • Lilli Smirnow 
  • Chin Chin Aithang 
  • Ace Brincat 
  • Saraya Landy 
  • Tayla Parsons 
  • Riley Ker 
  • Rory Simmons 
  • Amos Rum Khar 

Compassion 

  • David Mcdowell 
  • Alice Chen 
  • Tyler Howie-Boucher 
  • Yasmin Landy 
  • Natasha Rowe 
  • Chin Chin Aithang 
  • Saraya Landy 
  • Tayla Parsons 
  • Charlie Sacco 
  • Annabelle Blunt  

During Semester 1, the Inaugural House Downball tournament was run. The tournament saw house teams take on each other in a knockout tournament into finals. Red House dominated with 3 out of 4 teams into the finals. We saw Damon Kaniewski and Kai Weston from year 10 take home the trophy. Congratulations to all teams that participate and got red house some house points along the way!

Red House displayed their team spirit at the Swimming and Athletics Carnival, it was great to see students dressing in red and participating in events! Students were quick to learn a new chant for 2021 and shouted it loud and proud at both carnivals.  

 

 

Allie Grey-Smith
Red House Leader

PreviousSTUDENT WELLBEINGNext ASPIRE

ASPIRE

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A big congratulations to the Semester 1 Dux award recipients. Matilda and Jackson R are two of our current ASPIRE students and Tara, Jackson A and Rhys are all past Aspire students. A special mention to Lyzia for her award – she recently completed the Victorian High Ability Program for English and has this term been chosen to complete the Maths program. It is fantastic to see our highly able students challenging themselves and achieving excellent results. 

 

 

Over the last few weeks our ASPIRE students have once again shown great resilience switching to remote learning. Well done for attending your online classes and for submitting work throughout lockdown. The Year 7 ASPIRE class and other interested students got to participate in a special Victorian Challenge and Enrichment Series event, a writing workshop called, “Fractured Fairy Tales”. This workshop challenged students to create their own version of the Little Red Riding Hood Fairy Tale using the Metaverse App. Congratulations to all students that attended, actively participated and put in their best effort. Connor Kreemers from 7C attended the event, here’s what he has to say about the program: 

“This week we attended an online course, Fractured Fairy Tales, in which we started on a task of writing a short, choose your own adventure story about the well known fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. We watched a short film of another version of the Little Red Riding Hood and then they explained how to use an app to make our fairy tale come to life in a video-game-like story with different scenarios depending on what button you pressed. Overall, it was a fun experience and I very much enjoyed using the app and trying out new things.” – Connor Kreemers, 7C 

Later this term the Year 8 and 9 ASPIRE classes will be attending an excursion to participate in a Design Think day looking into Sports Technology. This will be a wonderful opportunity for our students to work in groups to empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test a solution to the given problem. Details about the day will feature in our next Newsletter! 

Lastly, a reminder that if you know someone who will be starting Year 7 at Mooroolbark College in 2022 please encourage them to read about and apply for our ASPIRE program. Our testing day is on Saturday 11th September and you can register you interest here: https://www.trybooking.com/BQHHO 

 

 

Please don’t hesitate to email me at aspire@mooroolbarkcollege.vic.edu.au if you have any questions regarding the program or our testing day. 

 

Kara Salmon
ASPIRE Coordinator and High Ability Practice Leader

 

 

PreviousRED HOUSENext VCE

VCE

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Our VCE students have all been working hard, with Year 11 completing Unit 2 and Year 12 well into Unit 4 and progressing well. They are to be commended for taking the recent period of remote learning in their stride and settling back into a learning routine. It’s also been great to see the Year 12 students keeping up their positive attitudes and displaying plenty of motivation, with many of them attending extra revision classes as we get close to the home stretch before exams. 

There are several exciting events happening over the rest of the term; the Year 12 dress up day on the 17th of August and we are all curious as to what creative costumes students will come up with for the theme of that day. ‘Decades’! The highly anticipated Year 12 social is also quickly approaching after being rescheduled, and while it is still a while away, there is a sense of excitement whenever it is mentioned. The social is sure to be a fantastic night full of fun and the opportunity to create lasting memories. While the rescheduling of the Year 11 Debutante Ball has moved into Term 4, the students are still looking forward to it and have been looking superb during rehearsals. 

Finally, a reminder to Year 11 and Year 12 students doing an accelerated subject – the English practice exams are coming up on September 16th, coinciding with Parent Teacher Interviews and the remaining subjects will be running Monday to Thursday in the first week of the holidays.

Good luck for the rest of the term, everyone! 

 

Dane Keogh
VCE Coordinator

 

PreviousASPIRENext VCAL

VCAL

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Here is a quick overview of the diverse topics and tasks VCAL students are focused on at the beginning of Term 3.  

Work Related Skills 
Year 11 WRS students have been planning for Market Day and completing their Food Safety Handling training. Whilst Year 12 have been learning about work related bullying and researching their rights and responsibilities in the workplace. 

Literacy 
Year 11 Literacy is focussed on the 2020 (21) Tokyo Olympics exploring issues surrounding organisation, vaccinations, social distancing and what the future will hold for Brisbane in 2032. Whilst Year 12 have been focussed on respectful relationships using the TV series ‘The Hunting’ to trigger discussions about the laws surrounding sexting and their rights and responsibilities. 

Numeracy  
Year 11 have been honing their financial maths skills by completing the financial assignment, putting into practice their budgeting skills. Year 12 students have had their estimation, measurement and research skills put to the test whilst designing their own ‘tiny house’. 

Personal Development Skills 
Year 11 students have been studying community member issues and are now focussed on cultural diversity with group work centred around using empathy and compassion skills when learning about different cultural groups in our community. Year 12 have been unpacking their knowledge and understanding of racism through the lived experiences of people of colour from around the world. Students are learning to identify, describe and explain their understanding of conscious and unconscious bias. 

Club 3/4
Students are encouraged to join their teachers at Club 3/4 on a Tuesday 3pm – 4pm to receive help and support from their VCAL teachers. 

VCAL Students have shown their resilience yet again, switching from onsite to remote and back to onsite learning seamlessly. Well done VCALers, your teachers are so proud of you! 

 

Natalie Bisi 
VCAL Coordinator  

PreviousVCENext CAREERS/PATHWAY REPORT

CAREERS/PATHWAY REPORT

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Term 3 is a very busy time in the Pathways area. Course Counselling for 2022 is well underway, with the current Year 8 and 9 students having completed their selections. Year 11 and Year 10 students have just had their Course Counselling sessions this week.   

It is important that students refer to the year level handbooks that were distributed in homegroup on our return from lockdown and make informed decisions in regards to their subject selections. All relevant forms and year level handbooks can be found on the College website. 

Year 12 students will be having VTAC sessions in the coming weeks that will provide information on how to complete their VTAC applications. Information will be available on Compass soon in regards to a VTAC parent information session.       

 

Jenny Roache
Senior School & Pathways Leader        

PreviousVCALNext ENGLISH

ENGLISH

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English 
 
We would like to acknowledge all the amazing efforts of students, parents, guardians, teachers, ES staff, and those in the school community who have rallied once again and gotten through the tumult of the past few weeks during remote learning. Well done! 
 
English welcomes Sophie Morane to the English faculty! We hope this odd welcoming experience to the school via online learning has been enlightening! All the best to you and your future at Mooroolbark. 

Students in Year 9-10 are encouraged to keep an eye on their Compass newsfeeds for further information on the specialists on offer for them – English Language and Literature. 
 
Through the year levels 

Senior students begin their preparations for their final units of study for VCE and aim to consolidate on their previous successes in semester one. 

Our Year 7 Aspire students rose to the challenge of writing a story of exactly 20 words. After some impressive brainstorming and editing, these are some of the final products. All of the students should be proud of their creativity and willingness to attempt such a challenging task! 

Look for yourself! 

In year 10 English, students have been introduced to comparative essay writing which involves the study of two separate texts but with similar themes, characters, and ideas. Students aim to find, analyse, and interpret these in the form of an essay. In the preparatory stages of the unit, one group have gone back to the tried-and-true carousel activity aiming to find relevant evidence under the themes provided. We think they came up pretty darn well! 

Neologism of the month… 
A neologism, from Greek meaning ‘new speech/utterance’ is a relatively recent or isolated word or phrase that is emerging into common or frequent use. 

June Neologism: ‘Blamestorm’ 
This neologism describes the process of assigning blame, usually in a scheduled meeting or group discussion in relation to a negative outcome. This has been used in corporate contexts for instance when a deadline isn’t met, or a project isn’t successful. The impending blamestorm would be the follow up meeting or conversation where people have a chance to attribute blame unto those responsible either in secret or in public. 
 
e.g. “It does no good to blamestorm, you should be looking for a solution”. 

 

English Recommendations: 

Film: Raya and the Last Dragon

TV Show: Bob’s Burgers 

Novel: ‘Oddity’ – Eli Brown 

 

Tyrone Ingham
English Key Learning Head

 

PreviousCAREERS/PATHWAY REPORTNext LIBRARY

LIBRARY

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As always, the Library has been very busy organising our collection! We have some fantastic new titles, which are all on display and we are always willing to offer a recommendation. If you haven’t been into the Library for a while, make sure you find time to drop in and see us!  

While we missed NAIDOC week because of the holidays, we still put out a display of some fantastic Indigenous texts – if you like reading books by Indigenous authors then there is a lot to choose from! Some of the best are picture books, with incredible messages and beautiful images.  

 

We’re also waiting patiently for the announcement of the winners for the CBCA Book Awards, which will occur on August 20th. We’ve read all of the shortlisted books and it’s hard to decide which one we think should win – they are all such brilliant reads! We think you should read them as well – that’s how good they are!  

 

 

Premier’s Reading Challenge 
Don’t forget to log all your finished books on the PRC website. If you don’t have any login details, then you can ask Miss Pauer!  You get House Points for all the books you log on the site and for everyone that finishes the challenge, there is a hot chip lunch on offer!  https://vprcidentity.eduweb.vic.gov.au/account/login  

We have several students that have completed the Challenge already! What an amazing reading journey they’ve had!  

Book Club is back on!  
Running every Tuesday lunchtime, if you would like to participate in Book Club, please speak to Miss Giles! We chat all things books and reading, there are lots of fun activities and we also supply the snacks! We’ve been busy writing some recommendations that are for students, by students, which you’ll be able to find in the Library!  

 

Prue Bon
Library Coordinator

PreviousENGLISHNext LANGUAGES

LANGUAGES

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It’s Term 3 already and so it’s time to welcome back Mrs Jiaqi Tan after maternity leave! Due to the increasing popularity of Chinese at Mooroolbark College we are now able to have two Chinese teachers, meaning we have twice as many innovative and engaging ideas to share in Mandarin!  

Allen Wu, Mrs Tan’s one-year-old son following in his mother’s footsteps and dressed to impress! 

Term 3 may have seen a bit of a stop-start beginning with another Covid-inspired lockdown, but this has not stopped us from celebrating the fact that we have two Semester 2 Year 9 Chinese classes for the first time. These students will of course be invited along to the Year 8 excursion now planned for the end of this term. Read on for more…! 

Year 8 Languages Celebration Excursion
To celebrate their Language studies and to link with the cultural theme and topic of Food, our Year 8 students will have the opportunity to attend the Year 8 Languages Celebration Excursion. Students will be able to choose to eat at either Shanghai Village (Chinese) or the Hofbräuhaus (German), regardless of which language they have studied. Sadly, after more than forty years of visiting the Cuckoo in Olinda, we have had to find a new German-themed venue as the Cuckoo had to close its door in 2020. We are sure that the Hofbräuhaus will make for an equally exciting cultural experience! With both venues located in the city we plan on using the train for transport, leaving around 10:00am and returning around 2:30pm.   

Recent highlights
During the lockdown students made use of TEAMS & Education Perfect in an innovative way to prepare for both CAT 1 (Oral) & CAT 3 (Comprehension). By sharing the screen to show EP as well as the TEAMS chat, students could compete online for star-chart merits by entering the correct responses in the chat. We gave thumbs-up for the first three correct responses and used this data to ensure on student engagement and participation.  

 

 

On top of this, Chinese also made use of Quizzes on Education Perfect, Kahoot and Quizlet, all of which are great warm-ups for online classes. Furthermore, listening practice (where students listen to the sentences teacher read, type in the target language and provide a translation to earn points for their team) ensures our students finish their learning strongly too, as can be seen below.  

 

 

German Orals
Our Year 8 students have been busy preparing for their oral CATs. 

 

Jonas Bahlo
Languages Key Learning Head  

 

PreviousLIBRARYNext SCIENCE

SCIENCE

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Our students are back in the science labs and this means they are back developing their scientific practical skills. Our year 12 Environmental Science class explored sustainable energy. They developed an understanding of the importance of meeting today’s energy needs by not depleting the resources for future generations. Sustainable energy often creates little harm to the environment and once set up can be a low-cost option. Students explored creating electricity from wind. There are many factors that contribute to the efficiency of wind turbines, such as the materials used and the height of the towers. Students investigated the following questions to find the most efficient way of generating the energy. 

  • What is the best angle for the turbine blades? 
  • What is the best number of blades? 
  • What is the best length of blade to use? 

Each group collected their data and together were able to draw conclusions based on these investigation questions. 

In Biology, students investigated genetically modified organisms (GMOs) which involves transferring a gene from one organism to another through genetic engineering. Students transformed a species of bacteria (E.coli) with a gene that codes for a fluorescent protein (which came from a bioluminescent jellyfish). At the completion of the experiment students were able to view their newly transformed fluorescent bacteria under a UV light. 

National Science Week 2021 is just around the corner (August 14 – 22) and this year the theme is Food: Different by Design. We all love to eat. But how will nature, technology and human intervention change the food we have available into the future? The CSIRO along with Australian industries and entrepreneurs are using science to explore new innovations. 

We will be celebrating the week each lunch by sampling some of the future food possibilities. We will be trying Choc Chip Cookies (with cricket protein), BBQ flavoured crickets, Bush tucker and a BBQ of plant-based meat options. We encourage all students to pop over and have a taste test! 

 

Skye Jennings
Science Key Learning Head

 

 

PreviousLANGUAGESNext THE ARTS

THE ARTS

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The Arts KLA has emerged from our latest period of remote learning successfully, ready to return to face to face learning and practical activities. Our students have been enjoying many varied activities this term, from using our new cameras to build photography skills, portraits in Art, making films in Media, illustration and design in VCD, keyboard and performance craft in Music, creating sculptures in Ceramics and creating characters in Drama. Many of our VCE classes are busy preparing their folios for Unit 2 and 4 assessment and are producing some amazing pieces of art. 

We are looking forward to sharing the great work our Addams Family cast, band and crew have been putting together throughout the holidays and during remote learning. Despite the date being postponed, the team are working productively and positively to produce a production. Details will be decided upon and shared very shortly.  

We have had some changes in staffing since our last report, bidding farewell to Sarah Clarke (Drama). We wish her all the best with her new role and thank her for her contributions. We welcome Sophie Morane to the team, who will be our new drama team member, Lana Jones, who will be working in Arts and Technology and also Alex Ristovski, our new Woodwind teacher. We are looking forward to working with them and their contributions to the college.   

 

Jordan Van Keulen
The Arts Key Learning Head

PreviousSCIENCENext HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATION

HEALTH & PHYSICAL EDUCATION

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Semester 2 is flying by and there are many events happening around the College.  

The Year 7 and 8 students have been working hard through their Winter Sports this term. Students have had the opportunity to participate in a range of sports including Gymnastics, Hockey, Soccer, AFL, Softball and Badminton.  

In Term 4 we look forward to hosting our inaugural SEPEP tournaments. The Year 7s will battle it out in Netball and the Year 9s will compete in SEPEP Handball. It is sure to be a fantastic term of events.  

After not being able to run our Gymnastics program last year due to Covid-19, we are extremely excited to be running it this term for both our Year 7 and 9 students. Gymnastics activities range from floor routines and apparatus work including the high bar, vault, beam, ropes and rings! This program tests students on a deep cognitive level, as they move through individual and team challenges, that they might not have experienced before.  

An important reminder for students to bring their PE uniform in a bag to every lesson. This aids in reducing the likelihood of lost items and expensive uniform replacements. Additionally, if you are able to label your top and bag that will also assist in keeping personal belongings in one place. I’d like to thank the parent and college community for their support in this process. 

It’s been a successful month for Mooroolbark College in Interschool Sport, with three teams competing at the Eastern Metropolitan Region championships. 
 
Congratulations to the following teams: 
– Year 7 Boys AFL 
– Year 7 Girls Netball 
– Intermediate Girls Soccer  
 
Special mention to the Year 7 Girls Netball team who played incredibly well, placing second in the region.  

This terms sports are Basketball, Hockey and Table Tennis. Please have a look at Compass for the Microsoft Forms sign-up sheet. 

 

Stephanie Todd
Health and Physical Education Key Learning Head

 

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Mooroolbark College Newsletter – August 2021