Current restrictions in Victoria do not allow us to have parents in our schools. Year 12 students completed their external (and final) exams yesterday. It is customary to hold the graduation dinner on the day of the last exams. Usuato have 30 people to gather outside. As the class is very small, it was hoped that an evening outdoor picnic could allow this event to be face to face with the small class of students, their parents and teachers. As the day approached, the weather forecast was not good – cold with rain. One week prior, the event was changed to an online one using MS Teams. This wou ..read more

Victoria has hit the 80% vaccination status for all citizens aged 16 and over. As of last Friday at 6pm, people who live in the metropolitan area of Melbourne have the same priveleges and eased restrictions that regional Victorians have. All students in both metro and regional areas are back at school. There are no restrictions on movement for Melbourne folks (within Victoria). They are now free to travel to regional Victoria. We are learning to live with COVID-19. People who are not double vaccinated cannot enter many businesses and organisations. School is returning to a COVID-19 normal atmo ..read more

All students have finally returned to school on Friday of last week. They came back in staggered stages – years 12 and 11 who were studying VCE subjects for 2 weeks before the end of last term together with prep to year 2 students. There was a 2 week holiday break and the same students returned for the first week or term 4. On week 3, year 7 students returned full time, with years 3, 4 and 9 coming back on Tuesday and Wednesday; and years 5 and 6 and year 10 on Thursday and Friday. This was rather difficult to manage, as I teach all year levels from year 3 through to year 12. It meant a mix of ..read more

Hay bales block the school driveway. Note tractor in background (used to bring haybales to school) Today was a special day on many counts. After nearly3 months of remote learning and some hybrid learning, students all returned to school at the one time, after being staggered back to school. Year 11 and 12 students returned 1 week before our spring holidays (6 weeks ago) on a full time basis, as did prep to year 2 students. Over the last 2 weeks, years 3 and 4, 8 and 9 returned on a Tuesday and Wednesday, whilst years 5 and 6 returned on a Thursday and Friday. In that same 2 weeks, year 7s ret ..read more

So many teaching ideas come from looking at the site days of the year celebrated around the world. Sept 13th has many things to acknowledge including Roald Dahl Day – a number one author for children’s books. However, for my ICT subjects it is interesting to see that it is also Programming Day. As we are in remote learning, we will do the following activities to acknowledge them. Listen to Code Anthem a song on Code or Java Script Rap as students entered the MS Teams live meeting Walk through the days of the year for September 13th Watch Roald Dahl and the trailer on the Witches by Roald Dahl ..read more

Morale and engagement has been low amongst both staff and students, since the announcement two days ago that we would be remaining in lockdown for possibly up to 2 more months. If this happens Melbourne, will be the longest locked down venue in the world! The Delta COVID-19 virus has increased our daily numbers. Remote learning will continue on! For my year 7 and 8 ICT class I decided to just do some fun things. My grandchildren had shown me “Guess the Movie in Emojis” on youtube. After talking about special days around the world, students used the chat of MS Teams, Live Meeting, to share the ..read more

Staff and students returned to school for Term 3. COVID-19 seemed under control in Victoria at this stage. However, cases were appearing in NSW. I was fortunate enough to go to Melbourne with Year 11 students and our assistant principal. In order to comply with COVID safety, our accommodation had to provide a separate space for us as we could not share any common facilities with other school and community groups. The Hotel Claremont was able to guarantee this. There was another school group but we were in separate wings and had separate breakfast times, with the dining area being thoroughly cl ..read more

Just as we had all settled back at school, having returned for 9 face to face days, and as we had all felt comfortable that a donut day (no COVID-19 cases( had been reported for the Wednesday. It did not seem so concerning that that very same Wednesday afternoon, two cases were reported. This number would go into Thursday’s numbers. VCE students completed their first Business Management SAC for Semester 2 on Wednesday afternoon. The Olympic games gave us all something positive to follow with Australia doing well with the medals achieved. It was a much needed distraction to the daily COVID-19 u ..read more

MS Teams has been an ideal tool both for use within the classroom but also for the whole school. This morning our Assistant Principal ran the full school assembly (years 3-12) from the school. For those students who were at school (children of essential workers, or students at risk), they were able to log in as could all the staff and the students teaching and learning from home. A screenshot of the live school assembly Here is what it looked like: an announcement (an option in Teams) was made in the School Assembly Team, alerting all students to the Assembly, commencing at 9am. This meant th ..read more

Initially our fifth lockdown was to be for 7 days, but due to the nature of the Delta variant of COVID-19, it has been extended to 14 days and although community transmission is zero at this stage, new exposure sites are being announced from those who are known contacts of patients. Much to the delight of students and on their first week back, students no longer needed to wear masks inside the classroom. However, this will all change again once we return to school. Our assistant principal reminded us “that we have done this before, and have done it well. Keep in mind the learnings of past peri ..read more