Berwick Campus – 21 March 2019

House Swimming Carnival

Congratulations to all staff and students for contributing to a fantastic House Swimming Carnival last week. All Houses were showing enthusiastic support and encouragement for their team members as they competed for the two main awards for the day; House Spirit and Overall Winning House.

The day was symbolic of the positive spirit that exists at the Berwick Campus and is a reminder of the cultural importance of whole campus and whole college events on the calendar.

Congratulations firstly must go to McDonagh House who were successful in taking out the House Spirit award which takes into account the number of participating students, cheering and support, colours and costume, and attendance numbers on the day.

Thanks to Adam Lawrence and Josh Wright who coordinated the day so successfully and to Dennis Krinas for being such a passionate MC for our event.

The overall honours for the day being awarded to McKenna House – Great Effort!

Carry the Water for your Village challenge

During our Ash Wednesday service two weeks ago we learnt about Thandolwayo who had to transport water on her head on a 7km round trip to her village – all whilst dodging the occasional hippopotamus and alligator!

Yesterday, students and teachers had the opportunity to test their skills at carrying their water for their “village” for this week’s Project Compassion activity.

Everyone lined up and moved as quickly as possible from one end of the outdoor turfed area to the other. The only challenge is – they had to dodge and weave around obstacles that block a clear path – they were doing this all whilst transporting/holding a trough of water on their head!

The cost was $1 per entry – upon entering the challenge, students received a raffle ticket for entry into the Easter raffle, which is to be drawn out in the last week of school.

The individuals who successfully returned with the most water in their bucket received a bonus raffle ticket in addition to the raffle ticket they already were given for paying their entry.

Head of Campus Competition – We Grow Together

Year 7 – Puneet Badireddi

This is a five in one poster all highlighting the growth theme. The birds don’t leave anyone behind while flying. The trees held on to the apples and they fell in groups to stay together. The pumpkins have grown large as a result of how many years they were together. The people are working together to lift up the T. The tree house also grew together. This all shows how people can grow when they give time and energy to one another.

Year 8 – Kristian Marki

Wolves live and grow as a pack. They are always helping each other out when there is trouble, they work as a team to be the greatest. When one is having trouble everybody comes and helps. This reflects us at SFX in our classrooms, when one of our friends are having trouble, we are there to help them, when wolves get in a fight, they all go and help out. When we are having difficulties with our work, everyone is there to help us.

We All Grow Together, Wolf or Human.

Year 9 – Zitinia Lopez

In the creation of this visual, I wanted to show the theme of growth through different meanings. The main idea of growth is represented by our school through a tree and it was included as nature will always be a way to relate to growth.

The tree placed in the centre of my graphic shows its roots through the dirt and the St Francis Xavier College logo can be seen. The dirt where the tree grows from contains character strengths. They are the main six character strengths I believe that we need to grow together. We may see a tree growing from the top, but we need to also look at the roots as that is where it grows from. These roots represent where the character strengths are obtained from and through that, the tree can grow. A beam of light shines down onto the tree and this represents hope. Hope is always needed to grow. As a College, we need to have hope to face many challenges. As the tree grows, representing the College, it reaches out to the character strengths underneath the dirt, representing how they are seen within us. Shadows of people have been placed on the sides because we may not always see ourselves growing, but others always will.

Hands On Learning – Scout Park

Recently, the Hands On Learning team attended the local Scout Park over a four-day period to complete a number of jobs including cleaning out the drains under the roadways, making channels off the roads and removing rubbish from the lake. Our students also enjoyed painting the posts. All groups worked extremely well in supporting our local facilities. Special thanks to Allan and John for their coordination of this initiative.

Multicultural Week – Science Activity

Cultural Diversity Week – Learning about Indigenous Australian cultures in Year 8 Science

In our Science class we are currently learning Geology for our rocks topic. As part of Cultural Diversity week, we explored the uses of rocks that are evident in the culture of Indigenous Australians. We learned how Indigenous Australians used rocks to make paint for decorative purposes using rock pigments, such as ochre. It also surprised me that they used rocks to process food because I didn’t know that was possible.   

Maddy Vine

In Science class we investigated characteristics of various rocks and linked these to uses of rocks by Indigenous Australians. It was interesting to learn that, for hunting, Indigenous Australians connected a stone to the end of their spear, or they used it for cutting meat and chiseling wood for fire. For this they used quartzite that was put into a handle.

Joshua Stewart

I learned that mixing together the substances of rock and stone created a stone knife which was used for ceremonial purposes. They also used different rocks to extract mica that they would use for different colour body paints, for use in traditional celebrations or producing art work, which is a popular past time of indigenous Australians. This was really interesting as I never thought about where paint comes from before. 

Emma Martin

Thanks to Siobhan Paul for leading this activity with her students.

Student News

Well done to Tara Medlen (Year 9) who had raised over $250.00 for the Relay for Life charity by selling a range of homemade jams and spreads.

Congratulations to Georgia Pettinella (Year 9) who will be travelling to South Africa in July to represent Australia in the Commonwealth Cup Showdance Championships