Is Ned Kelly a hero or a villain? This is the question Grade 7 students have been exploring this term in English. Carole Wilkinson’s novel Blake Snake uses a variety of primary and secondary sources to explore the events that unfolded in the late 1800s. For their final assessment in this unit., students will be making an informed decision, around whether one of Australia’s most famous outlaws was a hero, villain or victim.

During HASS, students have been studying ancient China. They have learnt about a Chinese educator and philosopher by the name of Confucius. Confucius’ teachings come in the form of a series of proverbs. A proverb is a simple, concrete, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience.​ How many of the following proverbs are you familiar with?

• Great minds think alike
• If you snooze, you lose
• No pain, no gain
• Money is the root of all evil
• Love is blind

Some popular proverbs among the Grade 7 students were:

• "Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it."
• "Respect yourself and others will respect you."
• "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."

This week, our students have sat their annual PAT testing for Mathematics. We have been blown away by their results. This is a direct reflection of their effort within Intervention and core mathematics classes. The current unit of work we are exploring is chance and data. We have been focusing on theoretical probability and experimental probability and this week will be conducting some chance experiments. Our Intervention focus is on fractions, decimals and percentages.

You may have wondered why your child has been asking to go out and stare at the night sky recently! As a grade, we have been exploring space in Science. Students have enjoyed learning about the Earth’s position to the sun. The phases of the moon and a focus on eclipses have intrigued some students with great questions being produced.