YEAR 8 NEWS
MPOWER ME DAY 14 / 15 SEPTEMBER
The Year 8 MPower Me is a two day pastoral event aiming to build the self-esteem and confidence of Year 8 students by connecting them through friendship and structured activities to create a cohesive and friendly school community.
Young people face many pressures such as, conflict, stress, bullying and low self-esteem, that require a number of learnable skills such as assertiveness, reflectivity, self-awareness, empathy, problem solving and conflict resolution. St John’s, with its school motto the challenge to live out PAX CHRISTI – the Peace of Christ, endeavours to improve the physical, mental and social wellbeing of young people to help them manage these pressures in a positive way.
Sessions will focus on right & respectful relationships, self-representation, belonging and connection and self-talk. Students will also participate in activities including team building, bushwalking and Box ‘N’ Breathe.
This is a highlight of the year for Year 8 students at St Johns in which wonderful memories and connections are formed through shared experiences and challenges.
Mr Zac Ellul is busy coordinating events for MPower Me day and the staff involved are looking forward to sharing the experiences and developing our connections with Year 8 students and having fun!!!
On the 22nd and 23rd of August year 8 participated in a STEM day. Throughout the day the classes participated in three activities: plane building, earthquake simulator spaghetti towers and catapult construction. These two days were organised by the science department along with some help from senior students. These activities all required components of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Our highlights were the catapult construction where we built our own catapults that launched a tennis ball across the gym. All the groups had to work together to problem-solve. Some groups liked destroying their models and other groups had fun seeing their designs come to life. The spaghetti towers were really challenging and some groups' towers didn’t make it far, whilst others survived the earthquake and weight challenges. It took a lot of trial and error to make the planes have stability whilst in the air, but everyone loved seeing how high their planes flew. Overall it was a really fun, educational and entertaining day that everyone enjoyed. Thank you to the Science department who made this experience possible.
Kieran Kochaniewicz, Zac Mercier, Zali Delaney & Gianna Gonzaga
Year 8 SRC
Ms Wendy Isemonger
Year 8 Coordinator