In the last week of last term, we had several events where we celebrated reading and research!
Firstly, we had the 11 in 7 event where over 80 students in Year 7 who have read 11 books this year enjoyed a pizza lunch – you can see how much they enjoyed it from the photos, and congratulations to those students!
Next, we had our Eight Epic Reads event – 20 Year 8 students came to our movie and Krispy Kreme donut afternoon to celebrate reading 16 books in Year 8 – congratulations to those students!
The last event of the week was the Ancient World Museum on the Thursday we had over 200 Year 7 projects on display throughout the Research and Study Centre, all on the topic of the Ancient World, which they had spent the previous weeks researching. There were posters, ancient games, scale models of catapults, gladiators’ swords and shields, models of the Colosseum and many more. Each of these projects was accompanied by activities for other Year 7 students to do. During the day all the Year 7 classes came in during their Humanities lesson to have a look and partake – a lot of fun and hopefully learning was had by all!
In the last couple of weeks of term, all the Year 8s came in to research disasters for Humanities. We conducted some lessons in Critical Online Reasoning with them – upskilling them in differentiating fake from fact, both in website articles and photos. This is due to Mrs Gersbach and I undertaking a unit in COR taught by Stanford University and MIT late last year. The Research and Study Centre intends to build on teaching this throughout the College. The SIFT poster here is now in many classrooms.
Finally, we are encouraging our Year 11 students to plan their study in the lead-up to their exams – we have Direqt messaged them a study planner which has all their exams on it, and we have some hard copies available in the Research and Study Centre. Yesterday and next Wednesday after school we are running sessions on Planning Your Study and Memory Techniques just for Year 11s. I have just finished reading a book – The Awesome Power of Sleep by Nicola Morgan – which has reemphasized the importance of sleep for all of us, but especially for teenagers as they are still growing. Sleep has a big impact on academic performance as well as general health, and I encourage you to have a look at the links available here which give tips on how to get an “awesome night’s sleep”!
Mrs Virginia Yurisich
Head of Research and Study
