Year 7 Student Leadership

Mark Barron
Head of Year 7

Congratulations to our Year 7’s for their excellent start to Term 2. Students have arrived back to the College looking smart in their winter uniform and are clearly well prepared for learning. Behaviour and focus throughout the NAPLAN testing period has been perfect and the tone has been set for the rest of the term.

Our Year 7 Student Leadership Team were formally introduced during our Year 7 Assembly and they are already working hard in their new roles. These students worked hard to secure their positions and were identified by their peers to have clear leadership potential. We congratulate these students and wish them well.

Year 7 Homeroom Representatives

Chisholm - Lauren Clark and Thomas Vadja
de Vialar - Carys Vincent-de Sousa and Liam Piper
Mackillop - Jasmine Farrugia and Louis Quindoza
Merici - Sabina Vicoli and Luke Cardy
Pallotti - Victoria Pascoe and Declan
Romero - Jasmine Browne and Emanuelle Foo Mao Wen
Salvado - Chloe Adam and Brendan Boudville
Xavier - Elke Ruan and Darcy West.

Year 7 Representatives

Arts - Siarne Scarfo and Joshua Duckworth
Communications - May Hopwood and Hugh Livingstone
Sport - Jade Jerome and Griffen Collins
Ministry and Service - Lara Delilkan and Zach Cohen

Smart Goals

As we move into Term 2, every student should be setting new iSMART goals in SEQTA. They will be timely, measurable and subject specific. Students are encouraged to share these goals with parents and work towards their completion.

Grooming

We are seeking the support of students and parents with regards adhering to the Uniform and Grooming requirements at Av�԰� Christi College.

Key points to consider…

For boys, hair must be no shorter than a number two haircut.
Hair is not to be styled in such a way that it is capable, at any time of falling towards the eyes or face.
Extreme haircuts are not permitted e.g. for boys, undercuts or top knots.
Hair that is collar length or longer must be tied back.
Girls, length of skirts – please see College Diary if unsure

Assistance to students - Homework Club

Av�԰� Christi College provides a Homework Club for current students to attend each Tuesday and Thursday from 3:30pm-5:00pm in the College Library.

Welcome to.......

As of the 9th May, we will be employing some of our past students to assist at the Homework Club providing free academic assistance to those students who take advantage of the service.

Two past students will be available every Tuesday and Thursday assisting with a wide range of academic subjects. We welcome Shannon Kelly, Eamonn Kelly, Hayden Richards, Julianne de Souza and Clara Lingoh as our initial tutors at the Homework Club.

MSP PHOTOGRAPHY INDIVIDUAL PHOTO CATCH UP DAY

Parents,

Thank you for your recent support in the Individual Photo Day. Hopefully by now all parents have access to their children's SHOOT KEY for online ordering of photos. A catch up photo day has been scheduled for Monday 29th May, for students/staff who were absent on the day of the photographs. This will be held in the Communications Office on this day.

This will be the FINAL opportunity for students to have their official photo taken for ONLINE ordering. Orders will close at the end of the same business day, as we have 'extended' the timeline for ordering to coincide with this catch up day.

Students and staff will have the opportunity to have their photo taken between 8.00am and 12.00pm but a specific schedule will be sent out to those students who are listed as being absent on that day.

Av�԰� Communications

Australian Geography Competition 2017

Lidia Di Giuseppe
Teacher of Humanities

Students from Av�԰� Christi College took part in the 23rd annual Australian Geography Competition during Week 2 this term.

Nearly 60,000 students from around Australia have entered the Competition, which is joint initiative of the Australian Geography Teachers’ Association and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland. Competition coordinator Bernard Fitzpatrick said that the Competition gave teachers an opportunity to highlight geography in their schools and challenge their students.

“In today’s society, geography is a vital subject that all young people should study. Understanding place and people, and the socio-economic and environmental interactions at local, regional, national and international levels is important to the economic and environmental future of Australia,” said Mr Fitzpatrick.

Geography provokes and answers questions about the natural and human worlds, using different scales of enquiry to view them from different perspectives. It develops knowledge of places and environments throughout the world, an understanding of maps, and a range of investigative and problem solving skills both inside and outside the classroom. As such, it prepares pupils for adult life and employment. Geography is a focus within the curriculum for understanding and resolving issues about the environment and sustainable development. It is also an important link between the natural and social sciences.

As pupils study geography, they encounter different societies and cultures. This helps them realise how nations rely on each other. It can inspire them to think about their own place in the world, their values, and their rights and responsibilities to other people and the environment. (Source: The School Curriculum and the National Curriculum: values, aims and purposes, 1999, DfES/QCA. (Page 154)

“With schools in many parts of Australia having introduced the new national geography curriculum, it’s an exciting time to be involved in geographical education, and the Competition plays its part in this,” said Mr Fitzpatrick.

Year 11 students from around Australia will be selected to take part in Geography’s Big Week Out being held on Kangaroo Island, South Australia later this year. From that event, Australia’s team will be chosen for the 2018 International Geography Olympiad being held in Canada.

Mrs Lidia Di Giuseppe said “The school usually did well in the Australian Geography Competition. In the past, quite a few students from Av�԰� Christi have been awarded certificates of high distinctions’ and distinctions.”

Australian History CompetITion

On the 24th May (during Humanities Lessons,) 24 Year 8 and 48 Year 10 students will be participating in the Australian History Competition.

The length of the competition is 45 minutes.

The Competition is prepared by the History Teachers’ Association of Australia and run in conjunction with The Giant Classroom.

The primary goal of the competition is to provide an interesting and challenging experience for students. Students knowledge, skills and understandings of history are assessed by the competition.

Personal Project

The Personal Project is now in full swing for 2017! The students have all uploaded their Plans and Research to their folios, and should now be working on the production of their project. Later in the term we will begin working on the writing of the Personal Project Report. Each student has been allocated a Av�԰� staff member supervisor to assist them to stay on task and offer support.

For more details of the project, please see the Handbook and timeline which are available on the Year 9 Portal in Seqta.

Archbishop’s LifeLink Forum Launch

Judy Coelho
Coordinator of Liturgies and Retreats

On Tuesday, 2nd May, representatives of the Ministry Team were privileged to take part in the LifeLink Launch 2017. We left for Aranmore College and when we arrived we were warmly welcomed by students from 27 different schools and Archbishop Timothy Costello with Bishop Donald Sproxton. Once seated, Archbishop Costello used the inspirational life and sayings of St Mary of the Cross MacKillop to inform us about this year’s LifeLink message.

The first saying was “never see a need without doing something about it”. He said that it was the perfect description of generosity and selflessness. He also said that to be able to do this we must have eyes that are open to see the needs of others around us, ears that are tuned in to the different ways people call for help and a heart that is sensitive to the needs of others. In summary we must learn to be aware of needs and want to help.

The second saying he used was "remember who you are trying to follow”. In remembering that we follow Jesus, we can put Jesus at the centre of our actions and allow him to work in our lives.

We were also given information about LifeLink. It was established in 1994 and raises money that is distributed to organisations such as Centrecare, identitywa, the Shopfront and DayDawn that commit themselves to helping communities in need with either support or services.

LifeLink Day also helped us get ideas to help raise money to support these organisations, and the ministry team are already brainstorming some fun ideas. By doing this we are fulfilling what Pope Francis expressed, "...it is not only in what we believed and what we say, but in what we do, that we come to fully know and understand the message of love which Jesus brought to the world.”

We look forward to the support of the Av�԰� College community as we ‘raise awareness and raise money’ for LifeLink 2017.

By Rachel Dellaca Year 10

LifeLink 2017 was attended by the following students:

Olivia Dellaca - Year 8
Luke Phillips - Year 8
Samuel Watters - Year 9
Madison Wilde - Year 9
Yannick Machado - Year 9
Rachel Dellaca - Year 10

Academic Excellence Incursion – Games Guy

Filipa Carvalho
Head of Academic Excellence

During Weeks 1 and 2 this term, Years 7, 8 and 9 Academic Excellence Program (AEP) students participated in an incursion run by Andy Kirker, the Games Guy.

The Year 7 students played the "Colony Planet" game, where they took charge of groups of vulnerable colonists on an alien planet, and attempted to use their limited budgets to provide food, energy and other key resources to keep their people alive. Players were forced to consider exploiting the native organisms, the effects of pollution, habitat loss, sustainable developments and even atmospheric terraforming on the alien ecosystem.

Year 8 and 9 students played "Planet of the Apes" (no relation to the Colony Planet!) where they role-played a tribe of monkeys, engaged in trading bananas for food, wood for shelter & warmth, and tried to keep happy by avoiding sickness and injury, and by deciding what was a fair way to run their tribe. The monkeys were asked to debate the value of freedom, the distribution of wealth, social goods and universal human rights. Revolutions were engaged in, dictators deposed and gorillas philosophized.

Each of the games are strongly values-based and include the Australian Curriculum , Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) general capabilities of ethical understanding, critical & creative thinking, and personal/ social capabilities. The games involve collaborative strategic thinking within groups. Students were engaged during the full two hour session.

Some comments from students after the incursion included:

‘I like how it made me think about the future and the way my decisions affect if.’

‘I liked the various consequences that came with each decision.’

�ҵ�� was very entertaining and had a nice amount of teamwork, problem solving and challenge.’

�ҵ loved the concept and it was really fun with a nice twist. It also made me think about politics and different political systems and which ones work best.’

Year 8 Scitech Brainstorm Challenge

On Wednesday, the 3rd of May, thirty Year 8 students went with Science teacher Ms Stevens to participate in the Scitech Brainstorm Challenge Day. Once they reached Scitech, they split themselves into groups of three. These groups would be the ones which they entered each challenge in.

After the introduction, they got straight into the first challenge. This was a Maths quest. The Year 8's learnt about different types of encoding and decoding, and had to find different exhibits in order to crack the code. This wasn't an easy task, as most of the code forms they had never heard of before. Regardless of the difficulty, most groups did very well on this challenge.

After a short break and some morning tea, students completed the second challenge. This was an engineering challenge. The Year 8's needed to create a basket that could zip down a zip-line as efficiently and as safely as possible. Each group was given a set of basic materials, but could later 'purchase' extra items by giving up some of the points they had earned. The first zip line, was 2m long and most groups passed that one fairly quickly. However, the second zip line, a 5m one, was not so easy to pass. After numerous attempts, fails and extremely creative designs, only one group managed to get their basket to go 3/4 of the way down the zip line. Before they knew it, the time was up and it was time for lunch.

After lunch, the Year 8's participated in an astronomy challenge in the planetarium. For this challenge, they had to watch the video shown and answer some questions later. These questions were all about different aspects of space and astronomical collaboration. After the show in the planetarium, they moved to Scitech's new CSIRO Lab for a laboratory challenge. This involved testing the nitrate, acid, algae and salt levels of three different samples of water in order to find which sample of water would be the most suitable for marron farming. After completing these tests, each group had to answer questions based on their findings and come to a conclusion about which sample of water would be the most suitable for marron farming. After this challenge, all participants shared a light afternoon tea and made their way to the planetarium for the presentations.

Although Av�԰� did not come in the top 3, Team Wifi (Shannon Rees, Sophia Connolly and Kayla Van Der Linden, secured 7th place out of 45 groups. Congratulations to all Year 8 representatives who put in a lot of effort and returned to Av�԰� with smiling faces. Thank you Ms Stevens for chaperoning the Year 8's on this day and well done Year 8’s!

By Victoria- Ann Chong

Av�԰�

Middle School News - e-News 7 - 2017