Academic Life & Learning
THE ARTS
MELIORA – Dance Showcase
The Dance Students have worked tirelessly this year despite the challenges and changes that we faced throughout the year. Students from Year 10-12 classes have had the opportunity to work with a guest teacher, Teresa Thomas, to further enhance their skills and learn new styles of dance.
Fortunately, we were still able to host our annual Dance Showcase, MELIORA (ad.) ‘Better Things Are Coming’ at the end of October. It was a wonderful opportunity for our students to display all of their talent and hard work from throughout the year. It was a fantastic night of entertainment and students received some awesome feedback from parents and guests, who couldn't believe the talent that we have at Belridge!
The night had a positive energy amongst everyone and it was fantastic to see the students really enjoying the experience. What a wonderful way to wrap up the year of 2020.
Heather Currie
Dance Teacher
View MELIORA compliation here @BelridgeSC
Created by Cooper Chappel-Wood (Year 11)
Fashion and Design
Year 8 Fashion and Design students have been creating dream catchers. The exact origin of dream catchers is a little vague, however, many claim they came from the Ojibwe tribe of Native America. They are crafted to catch bad dreams protecting people, especially children from nightmares. It is said the bad dreams get stuck within the strands of sinew while the good dreams pass through and follow the feathers down to the sleeping person. Students were required to research and design their own dream catcher using an earth theme. The beach and ocean seemed to be a hit.
Jayne Hill
Home Economics Teacher
Fashion and Design Teacher
Talented Youth Writers Workshop
Award winning Australian author, Mark Smith, challenged and inspired some of our academic enrichment students during the recent Talent Youth Writers Workshop held at Belridge Secondary College. Engaging with international authors enables students to further develop their 21st Century competencies, in particular their cognitive and intrapersonal domains. During the five sessions held throughout the day, students were encouraged to use personal experience to build their story; to write more authentically. Mark concentrated on setting, explaining the benefits of using micro and macro setting, physically taking students to settings which inspired his Winter Trilogy: The Road to Winter, Wilder Country and Land of Fences, the second book receiving the 2018 Australian Indie Book of the Year for Young Adults.
Students wrote some incredible narrative pieces after using Mark’s advice to bring the reader into the setting by reducing the zoom, bring it in tight. The latter sessions of the day, built on students’ knowledge of characterisation using a layered effect. At the end of six hours of learning and refining their writing craft, students shared their work and are now keen to complete their stories. The next phase will see students seek to have their work published.
Ms Glynne Bartle
Academic Enrichment Coordinator
ECU Excursion
On Monday 21 September 2020, the Year 9 AE class, Ms Bartle and Ms Ferreri went on an excursion to Edith Cowan University Joondalup campus. The experience included many fun activities, including a tour of the campus (in a unique way) and demonstrations of how things work there.
After meeting Michelle Austin, our host for the day, we proceeded to a lecture room to learn more about the days’ activities. The first activity was an Amazing Race around campus. This was done in the form of asking groups to complete all questions on a sheet, requiring students to explore areas of the campus and find specific things. We were provided with a map, a pen, questions, and an answer sheet. While attempting to search for Building 18, my group stumbled upon Building 15, which had the world’s largest permanent periodic table on the side of the structure. Coincidentally, this related to a question on our sheets, which not many people were able to answer.
After a tough race around the campus, we moved on to our next activity – a science experiment with Ms Nardia Bordas. She took us into the new student labs, full of amazing technology, and walked us through an experiment. The experiment was to see how much light was able to pass through water with different levels of food colouring in it. We measured out the levels of food colouring to put in each sample. We placed the samples in a machine that measured the light as it passed through and comparing the results of the mouthwash test to results of distilled water, we discovered our answer. Let me tell you, there’s not much.
Next, after a short recess break, we proceeded to do another cool test in the Science Lab, this time with Dr Kris Lemson in the student labs. She has studied botanical sciences and loves plants and compost. Our task was to use high resolution digital microscopes to view a small amount of soil and compare it to a small amount of compost, which featured everyone’s favourite – bugs and worms! We were lucky enough to see a worm dispose of its waste. Through its slightly transparent skin, we viewed the intestines in action as they processed the nutrients from the consumed soil.
After our last science test, we made our way over to the maths area where we learned about fractals from Julia. She talked to us about fractals, which are objects that look the same when you zoom in. A broccoli is an example of a fractal as when you zoom in on the stems, they look like another tiny broccoli. We cut paper into a triangle fractal and then figured out Polanski’s triangle patterns. The class enjoyed it very much. The idea of fractals is very complicated, so here’s some examples.
And finally, after some lunch, we had heard from the Future Students representative, who explained university options and pathways, encouraging us to attend ECU in the future. Overall our experience at ECU was excellent, we thoroughly enjoyed it and many students would like to attend some day. Computer Sciences/Counter Terrorism and Intelligence units proved very popular with our class which are both computer-based programs.
We would like to thank the lovely people at ECU, Ms Bartle, and Ms Ferreri for allowing us to attend such an awesome experience. Thank you.
Mitchell Griffiths and Mya Firth
Year 9
Congratulations!
We are delighted to announce that Elouise Syers (Year 10) has been accepted into the Perkins Profs Open Academy for Term 4, 2020.
Elouise was successful in her application amongst a very competitive field of students from Years 10-12. She will be leaving school early every Tuesday this term to enable her to travel to the Harry Perkins Insitute of Medical Research to work with scientists.
Glynne Bartle
AEP Coordinator
Digital Technologies
#PeCan+ CTF 2020
What a weekend! An intense two days of Cyber Security (10th and 11th October) culminating in a Capture the Flag competition at Edith Cowan University. Hosted by the ECU Joondalup School of Science and AustCyber, this exciting event was run by a great bunch of passionate cyber security university students, with 100 high school students in attendance! The event ran face-to-face at the ECU Joondalup campus with 22 Perth teams as well as online via zoom with seven interstate teams (5 from Canberra and 2 in Victoria).
Saturday was our training session, where ECU students who developed the CTF challenges presented ‘how-to’ instruction seminars and ‘hints & tricks’ for finding solutions to the challenges. The day also had guest speakers sharing their careers in Digital Forensics (Bex Nitert), Social Engineering and Cyber Safety (Silvana Macri), as well as Pen Testing (Brianna O’Shea). We concluded the first day with a Learn to Linux session.
Sunday was the competition and it was #GameOn from 8:45am with a 2pm hands off the keyboard.
Our Year 11 team, Belridge Botnets (Cameron Spence, Will Johnstone and Oscar Longworth-Baker) and our Year 9/10 team Belridge Bytes (Blake McCullough, Kynan Sharpe, Ethan Gordon and Tom Kay) had to problem-solve, hack sites, debug code, execute tools to get in behind the images, decrypt information, carry out forensic investigations, and reverse engineer programs. So much fun!
Well done to our all our team members who worked tirelessly over the weekend to solve challenges above and beyond expectation. You are a formidable crew!
Liz Cassidy and Stephen O’Neil
Digital Technologies
EMPOWER: Essential skills and mindsets for the changing world of work
Students from the Year 10 Financial, Office and Consumer class were given the opportunity to attend an incursion on Wednesday 11 November, conducted by the Australian Business and Community Network.
The Australian Business and Community network are an Australian wide organisation that provide students the opportunity to interact with real businesses to enable them to enhance their work skills before entering the workforce.
The incursion was run through an online platform due to Covid-19 and the restrictions of not being able to conduct face to face sessions. Students were connected with employees from PWC (Price Waterhouse Cooper) who are a very large company which provides a range of services including audit and assurance, tax and consulting, cover such areas as cybersecurity and privacy, human resources, deals and forensics.
The aim of the two hour session was to build confidence, skills and mindsets such as resilience which will equip students to be able to adapt to a rapidly changing workplace and world. Students also learnt about the importance of recognising their strengths, interests and motivations and the connection to work.
Each group of students, comprising 2–3 students were each allocated two mentors from PWC who shared their experiences about their first jobs, their strengths, their paths to their careers and the importance, in particular, of overcoming failure to support their personal growth. Resilience was also a key aim of the session with ‘fabulous fails’ an important message for students.
Students were given the opportunity to listen to their mentors, interact with them virtually and share their experiences. Each group then reported back to the main room at the end of each mini session, sharing their experiences and knowledge.
The sessions that ABCN provide are invaluable for our students as they offer ‘real life’ experiences for them. Students also learnt the protocols of using online forums and the use of IT as an alternative during these times.
Leanne Gendle
Business Teacher
Lego League Competition - Robotics
This term, a group of Year 7 and 8 students have been learning to code Lego robots, as part of the FIRST Lego League Challenge. This gets students to use STEM skills of problem solving and collaboration to design a robot that can complete challenges on the game mat. This year’s focus is on fitness, and students have been working on creating a robot that can use a treadmill and do some weightlifting, amongst other things.
As part of this competition, students are required to not only work on a robot design for the challenge, but also work on a project to find new ways to get people active in the community. The groups have come up with some great ideas so far!
This work will continue into Term 4, as the ‘Krazy Koderz’ and ‘Lego Alphas’ teams prepare for the competition day against other schools.
Rebecca Edmonds
HASS Teacher
Thank you Rotary Club!
Belridge has been extremely lucky in receiving $1500 worth of lego donations from the Ascot Rotary Club, as part of their Bricktober fundraising campaign and donations to schools. Northbridge Rotary Club also donated $200 in cash which was put towards lego friends. We wish to express our thanks to both Rotary Clubs and especially Audra Keeble (Belridge Education Assistant) who has worked hard in seeking donations from organisations for the benefit of our students.
The Lego Play club is now open to students with special needs and any Year 7-9 students who want to come and have a go at building Lego creations.
Lego Play Club
Wednesday Recess
Room M6
HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCES
Around the Clock
Year 11 ATAR Geography students have been completing an "Around the Clock" revision activity on "Global Networks & Interconnections" before their Week 5 exam.
Best of luck with the revision Year 11 Geographers. All the hard work will pay off in the end!
Mrs Green
HASS Teacher
Life size learning in Geography
Year 12 Geography students have been busy completing their Geography course. They have had just enough time at the end of their year to review the course via clock revision and by life size learning to better understand the size and shape of the Perth metropolitan area in preparations for their upcoming exams.
The HASS department wish all Year 11 and 12 students the best in their upcoming exams.
HASS Department
Quality or Quantity?
This term in Humanities, the Year 9's have finished up their Geography unit and now commenced Economics. They have already learnt about the basics of Economics, the flow of cash through circular flow, and this lesson was around meeting the needs of the consumer. The question was, quality or quantity, which might be a silly question to ask teenagers when it comes to food! We compared the price and taste of branded foods compared to supermarket brands, but at the end of the day, it didn't really matter because at twice the price for well-known brands, quantity won every time. And no matter how much more there is in the supermarket brands, there was definitely no leftovers.
Jade Wright
HASS Teacher
Poppy and Remembrance Day
AEP class learn new skills
The Year 8 AEP HASS Class recently had a session with Steven Payne, a Microsoft Learning Consultant and Educator, extending their skills in Minecraft Education. Creating castles, students learnt how to use a structure block to export their medieval castle to other Microsoft Apps.
Lisa Manning
HASS Teacher
Science: Litter Audit
This term the Year 10 Science class has been learning about biodiversity and conservation, a unit in which I like students to undertake some practical work. This year we looked at the growing problem of plastic waste and litter that has a dramatic impact on terrestrial and marine life. One idea was to team up with the government organisation Keep Australia Beautiful https://kab.org.au/ and conduct a litter audit of the school grounds. Students spent one lesson collecting litter from around the school grounds and the another analysing it by type.
It was great to see the students' efforts in carrying out the audit that gave them an idea of how much and what type of litter can be found in the yard. It turned out that the worst culprit was plastic, with chips bags, wrappers and straws being the most items. Plastic items were followed by paper products like napkins and juice boxes.
At the end of the lesson students collected 6kg of litter in 45 minutes that could later be disposed of correctly.
Although there is still much room for improvement, in terms of reducing litter around the school, we found only one plastic drink bottle. It seems that most of our students already bring reusable water bottles to school. Reusing drink and food containers is a great way to reduce the litter in the environment and a trend that will hopefully continue on in the future.
The Year 10 class would like to thank Samantha Culbertson from Keep Australia Beautiful for lending the collection equipment and other resources needed for the litter audit.
Dr M Werner
Science Teacher
Year 10 students presenting their bounty of litter found in the yard
Book Week 2020
This year's Book Week consisted of fun activities such as quizzes, creating book covers in Minecraft, Book Chat with Dymocks and wrapping up with our 'dress-up as your favourite character' and photo booth day. Each student and staff who had their photo taken received a book mark with their photo on it. We look forward to more fun activities to celebrate Book Week in 2021.
Lisa Manning
Teacher Librarian
Belridge Beats students start their music library
A DJ isn’t much of a DJ without good music. Building up a music collection isn’t easy for a young teenager, especially in the age of streaming music services. Fortunately the students in the Belridge Beats DJ classes are getting some professional help.
Ultimix are one of the biggest and most respected names in the DJ industry. Since the 80s, Ultimix have been providing the latest popular music to top DJs around the globe. Belridge Beats students recently received several Ultimix issues for free. The music includes some new issues with some of the latest chart topping music as well as several “best of” issues containing dance favourites from past decades. Students have been enjoying practicing their developing skills using Ultimix remixes as they start to build their own personal music library. We appreciate the support from Ultimix.
Steve O'Neil
ICT Teacher
The results are in ...
Your Student Council for 2021
Nominations for the 2021 Student Council elections were recently held. Students and staff were able to choose candidates based on profiles prepared by the candidates themselves. Congratulations to the following students who have been appointed to the Student Council for 2021.
YEAR 8
Aansh Patel* and Tierney Trotter*
YEAR 9
Will Orr, Jakob van der Plas* and Charlotte Vinson*
YEAR 10
Blake Barisani, Mya Firth, Alex Henderson*, James Price, Danny Stewart*,
Gemma Spiers and Kate Tobin
YEAR 11
Millie Bishop, James Lun, Aspen Sharpe and Wesley Spaulding
YEAR 12
Cooper Chappel-Wood (Co-Captain)
Evie Innes (Co-Captain)
Jessica Firth (Vice Captain)
Jazzmyne Gatt, Noora Hameed, Imogen Martinez*,
Doreen Odidi, Cameron Spence and Maegan Trotter
New in 2021*
Chloe Ironmonger
Student Councillor Coordinator