Review and Reflect Sessions
Last week, Mr Gill and I had the pleasure of meeting with each Year 12 student and their parents for our Review and Reflect sessions. We were truly impressed by the dedication and focus our students are demonstrating as they set their sights high and work tirelessly towards their goals. These meetings provided a valuable opportunity to review data showcasing the tangible academic progress made through their perseverance, hard work, and commitment. We are incredibly proud of our students and excited to continue supporting them on their journey to success.

Celebrating Our Jewish Studies Expertise
Last week, I had the privilege of attending the second annual Jewish Educators Symposium, the last of which was held at Masada College in 2022, and this one held at Moriah College. As I listened to presentations from our very own College Head of Jewish Life, Shterny Dadon, and Acting Head of Jewish Life and Experiential Learning, Shoshana Gottlieb, I was deeply impressed by their expertise and passion. Shterny's talk, "Bringing Text to Life: An Immersive Learning Experience Through Design Thinking and AI," and Shoshana's workshop, "Creating Creativity: Empowering Students as Torah Storytellers" showcased the innovative and engaging approaches that enrich Jewish learning at Masada College. Their dedication to fostering student engagement and growth is truly inspiring.

Education during the Israel-Hamas War
As we continue our ongoing discussion about the tragic Israel-Hamas war, we strive to maintain a positive perspective while remembering its impact. Last week, Senior School students had the unique opportunity to hear directly from Ms Dafna Admati, a survivor of the Be’eri Kibbutz Massacre. Ms Admati's powerful testimony highlighted the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable hardship. Her story, filled with both tragedy and hope, served as a powerful reminder of the ongoing daily pain of our brothers and sisters in Israel today. Having their stories before us makes our prayers more powerful.

UIA Fundraiser: A Heartfelt Thank You!
To kick off the school year, we hosted our annual "Welcome to 2024" event for parents. In the spirit of community and engagement, we incorporated a fun-filled auction. Thanks to the generosity of our amazing parents, the event raised an impressive $4,800 through the auction, with additional donations of $2,849.45, totalling $7649.45. This incredible outpouring of support is a true testament to the generosity and commitment of the Masada College community. Your contributions will make a significant difference in supporting the important work of the United Israel Appeal (UIA). We extend our deepest gratitude to everyone who participated in the event, donated, volunteered, or helped make it a success.

Evacuations at Masada College
We recently conducted a series of successful evacuations, demonstrating the outstanding cooperation and preparedness of both our staff and students. While evacuations are always a serious matter, even during drills, they are an essential part of ensuring everyone's safety in the event of a real emergency. Our school community is well-prepared for such situations. All relevant safety stakeholders, including our security company, Police, CSG, staff, and students, are thoroughly trained and know exactly how to respond efficiently and calmly. This collaborative effort is what keeps our school safe on a daily basis.

Mrs Raquel Charet

It now feels like we are comfortably back into the term and our school year 2024 as students and staff are finding a rhythm in their routines again. Thank you to our families for supporting this transition to school life again and please continue to reach out to our teaching and patron teams as you need to.

As the students have been establishing these routines again, it is so heartwarming to see students taking pride in their small accomplishments each day and realizing the value in steady progress that will ultimately support them in their long term goals for their learning. Thank you to our teaching and patron teams who are ensuring that our school continues to be a safe and nurturing environment as we wholeheartedly support the progression and success of each student sp proudly.

The Masadian Portrait

As introduced in our Parent Information session last month, the Masadian Portrait is a new initiative at Masada and seeks to capture and evaluate the habits of mind, the learning dispositions and patterns of performance that provide for successful learning. So much of what we do at Masada is sometimes so hard to encapsulate in words and this portrait is an attempt to do exactly that.

The portrait is an ideal projection of the young adults that we wish to see graduate from Masada College as they move as learners into our demanding, ever evolving and complex world. The culmination of a successful student, Masada will argue, is a wise student, a student who strives to develop these attributes through a union of knowledge and lived experience.

The Masadian Portrait explores 7 learning dispositions. These dispositions are detailed using disposition components and students will explore the detailing in different ways throughout the year. It is important for us to see that the Masadian Portrait dispositions are being developed in many ways in the experiences we create here at Masada.

Highlight events
There has been a range of experiences that we have seen so far across the Senior School, and each brings a smile as we see the strengths of our students on display. Enjoy the short summaries below of some highlights.

Year 7 Orientation Camp - from Ms Shoshana Gottlieb
Year 7 students made the most out of their 3-day Orientation Camp, jam packed with fun activities, group bonding time and getting to chill with their friends away from the classroom. Students engaged in activities such as raft-building, kayaking and archery-dodgeball, as well as more relaxed activities like tie-dying, beading, and of course the famous talent show! Year 7 also got to experience wonderful programs run by our madrichim and the Peer Support team, exploring their transition into high school, and making the most of their time and friendships. Enjoy the two accounts for our students.

“I enjoyed archery because it was new to me and a special experience. I got to practice archery, and I liked it because I have never done anything like this and I had a great time. I improved my collaboration skills by doing group activities and we worked together to win games.” Romi Klein

“I personally enjoyed the Olympic games that the Peer Support set up on the first day -- especially the spoon egg race. I enjoyed helping my teammates as they learnt how to balance while being quicker! Fun!” Jade Sherman

“I really enjoyed the year 7 orientation camp because of all the activities. It was an amazing experience and I loved meeting new people and always having something to do. I really appreciated having a camp like this because I think it helped me to get ready for the year, since I got to meet many new friends and settle in better with everyone else. We mostly developed our critical and creative thinking skills as we had to do activities where we were put in a situation to figure out different ways or strategies for building something or for racing something.” Ora Teichtahl

SRC Training Day - from Ms Suzie Zeis
In an effort to foster leadership skills, teamwork, and a sense of responsibility among students, the Student Representative Council (SRC) has completed a comprehensive training day for students from Years 7 to 12. The event aims to equip our future leaders with the necessary tools and knowledge to effectively represent their peers and contribute positively to the school community.

Students worked collaboratively to come up with initiatives for the year ahead . The day consisted of icebreaker activities, workshops on leadership and communication and team building activities. The SRC Training Day has been lots of fun and a resounding success, leaving participants inspired and equipped with the skills needed to excel in their roles.

Year 12 Visual Arts Incursion - from Ms Danna Rosen
This week Year 12 Visual Arts partook in a full day art incursion with experienced tutors to support the making of their Body of Works. This learning opportunity encourages immersive engagement with their artmaking and provides a solid foundation to continue along this process. Having a full day allows students the time to experiment with new possibilities, helps clarify ideas and sparks some new ones. The guidance and expertise provided by our invaluable tutors not only strengthened the students' understanding of their own artistic practice but the confidence to continue along this journey.

Thank you to everyone who has made this first term so enjoyable thus far! We look forward to more vibrant learning experiences to come.

Mrs Jen Grace

In the Yellow Room this month we have been sharing folk tales, and the children have enjoyed experiencing the variety of mediums we have used to tell the stories. To support our Term 1 program About Me, we have shared ‘Goldilocks and The Three Bears’, and ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff', as both stories involve themes of family, keeping safe and addressing big feelings. We tell each story over a period of two weeks, to really support the children’s familiarity with the characters and plots. This enables the children to then retell the stories during play episodes, and to make deeper connections with the stories’ messages. We have used puppetry, digital whiteboard drawing, role-play dramatisations as well as traditional oral storytelling methods to give the children experience with a variety of rich literacy tools, and the understanding that stories may take many forms.

We witnessed pure magic yesterday as our ELC children met with their future Year 5 Buddies at the heartwarming Lunchbox Buddies event. The ELC children were in awe of the older students and the Year 5 buddies were very surprised how much the ELC children could teach them! We look forward to more gatherings as our Kindy Transition Program unfolds.

The Pelerman Foyer was buzzing on Tuesday as our new Junior School and Senior School students joined together for the New Student Lunch. While enjoying some delicious food, students and staff chatted about the start of the new school year, sharing their experiences and what they like about being at Masada College. We are excited to welcome all of our new students and look forward to continuing to hear about their journey at Masada.

Since the beginning of this term, we have had Year K-2 students participating in our after-school LEGO Robotics Club with Mr. Mei from TalentMind Robotics & Coding Academy every Thursday afternoon.

LEGO WeDo2.0 is a fantastic educational robotics platform developed by LEGO Education specially for Junior Primary school students to use in the classroom. It is characterised by its use of colourful LEGO bricks, easy-to-use software, and focus on basic programming and engineering concepts.

LEGO WeDo2.0 introduces students to robotics by a building plus coding approach. They learn about motors, sensors and how to control a simple robot using programming blocks. Through hands-on building experience with LEGO bricks, students obtain an understanding of basic mechanical structure, such as pulley and belt drive, different types of gears, crank and piston, etc. In addition, students can learn programming concepts like sequencing and loops in a fun and interactive way.

We hope students in Masada College could improve their analytical and problem-solving skills from such extracurricular activities. And we are happy to provide convenience to organise such after school programs in the school. If you want to know more about LEGO robotics or would like to enrol your child to our after-school Robotics Club, please contact Mr. Mei on richardmei31@gmail.com.

On Monday the 5th of February, our two Sport Captains Felix Wang and Simon Liu represented Masada and attended the ASSISA Basketball trials. The trial was very competitive and the boys participated in a wide range of different skill and game based activities. Both Felix and Simon were competing against numerous other talented year 5 and 6 students for a spot in the team. Congratulations to Felix and Simon who showed their outstanding Basketball skills and game based knowledge and ended up being selected in the ASSISA team. They will be representing ASSISA to play a tournament on Friday the 8th of March. Some students from this tournament will be asked to represent CIS. Masada staff and students wish Felix and Simon the best of luck.

Day 1

Upon our arrival in Canberra our first stop was at the Australian Electoral Commission, where the students learnt about the history of elections in Australia and what it takes to vote.

Following a lovely lunch stop in the beautiful Senate Gardens we made our way to the National Gallery and had the opportunity to view the famous Blue Poles and the works of Sydney Nolan, who students studied in Year Five.

Next on the itinerary was a visit to Parliament House for a tour of both Houses and a meeting with the Member for Bradfield, Mr Paul Fletcher. Our last stop before heading to our accomodation was at the Parliamentary Education Office where students gained an insight into what it is like to be a Member of the House. After a delightful dinner, we embarked on our final adventure for the day in Canberra: The Australian Institute of Sport's Sportex experience. Here, our students had the unique opportunity to try their hand at various sports taught at AIS, ranging from skiing, rowing, and cycling to soccer penalty shots and even the exhilarating Skeleton. It was a fantastic experience for everyone as they tested their skills in familiar sports and explored new ones.

Day 2

Our day started with Prayers, which were inspired by our trip to Canberra as the students sang Adon Olom to the tune of “Advance Australia Fair.”

Following a captivating drive through Yarralumla, where we glimpsed the diplomatic heart of the city with visits to several Embassies and High Commissions, our next destination was the poignant Australian War Memorial. Here, our students delved into the remarkable contributions of individuals like Harry Thorp, Nancy Wake, and EDD Sarbi, gaining insight into their pivotal roles in history.

Our Final Stop in Canberra was Questicon. The students absolutely enjoy the chance to explore and experiment in the many exciting Galleries.

Concluding our Canberra excursion on a high note, we ventured to Questacon. The students were thoroughly enthralled by the opportunity to immerse themselves in the myriad of engaging galleries, where they eagerly explored and conducted experiments, fueling their curiosity and igniting their passion for discovery.

Mr Morris

Congratulations to the exceptional individuals who have been recognised as recipients of the Week 4 Merit Awards!

Year 11 Design and Technology students were privileged to visit a local jeweller, designer John Thearle from Turramurra Jewellers to see first hand how a designer works within their space. John showed examples of different types of jewellery to explain the process of designing and manufacturing jewellery in relation to the design factors. They have also been learning how to use new machinery that they can use now that they are in Year 11. They made a small mirror to demonstrate their new skill base.