Beaconhills College

Last term’s lockdown was no fun, but did produce some of the most creative Year 9 ‘Personal Best’ projects we’ve seen yet.

Pakenham Campus students proudly displayed their projects last week, the results of hours of planning, design and creation.

Keen equestrienne Olivia Bartlett applied her love of horses to building an amazing horse sculpture, made from 184 individually-buffed horseshoes and fencing wire. Jackson McNeill spent 38 days doing up his 1993 Nissan Skyline R33 GTS-T, which he now plans to use for legal drifting.

Many projects required students to learn new skills. Ava Cashmore’s decision to make a bamboo water feature meant she had to learn how to use a welding tool. She said: “I wanted to learn to weld and do something creative – so dad taught me how to use different power tools.”

Personal Best gives students one term to create project representing their personal passion. Along the way, they document their work in a folio, including sketches, budget consideration, materials and tools used.

With all the pollen in the air at the moment, busy bees might want to check into one of these bee hotels for a bit of R & R.

Year 8 Essential English students got a real buzz today learning about bees in Australia. They discovered that the native bee population is at risk and accommodation is in short supply! So students got stuck into building some bee hotels to install in our College community gardens. The hope is the bees hang about to help pollinate our veggies, fruit and flowers.

It’s all part of our CAL (Community Action Learning) program, where service activities are integrated into our teaching and learning.

Year 8s at work on a bee hotel

The Beacon Explorers team are determined to finish the year on the high with some great experiential programs planned for the remainder of the school year.

A series of long-day outdoor education programs are set to go at Gembrook’s Gilwell Park for students in Years 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, along with children from Little Beacons.

The team has run a variety of on-campus activities since lockdown ended, including bushwalking, setting up tents and science activities. This exciting ‘silent crate climb’ challenge in Pakenham’s Junior School last week had the adrenaline pumping for our Year 9s.

Beacon Explorers staff manage all global, outdoor and co-curricular programs at the College.

Year 9 at Pakenham Campus was a hive of activity last Friday as students teamed up to tackle a project in the ‘Common Good’ Program.

Students could choose between six different options to support a different cause. They helped build possum boxes for bushfire-affected areas, knitted beanies for premature babies, made art smocks for children in hospital, sewed animal pouches for rescued animals, made play equipment for the Junior School or built a community garden.

The session was also a way for Year 9 students to reconnect with each other after the long period of lockdown.

Emmi Webber with her aprons

Alan Tian and Henry Yu work on cardmaking

Connor Gilbertson joined the knitting team

Ava Cashmore tries her hand at knitting for Common Good

Ethan Day and Ash Hart were busy on the community garden

Year 9 students from our Berwick Campus have been busy building an Indigenous Garden, as part of an experiential program run with Beacon Explorers.

Last week, the students extended the Tan Track leading up to the Year 9 building and added a garden bed with a snake-inspired pathway to separate the specimen and food species of plants. Consultation on plant selection is underway with the College’s Head of Indigenous Initiatives, Lynette George.

Head of Year 9 at Berwick, Marcus Roberts, said the project was one of the return-to-school initiatives aimed at building a sense of community. Other activities planned for coming weeks are student-led discussions of a firepit learning space concept, along with wellbeing and other activities for younger students run by Year 9 students and the Beacon Explorers team.

Students work on the new Indigenous garden.