ACTION HABITS

By Archie Leech & Harry Long

Action Habits has been one of the new activities of the St Brendan’s Program. An action habit is a specific skill or task that a student wants to learn or master. Action habits give students a chance to try something new or out of their normal learning range or skill set. While multiple students can have the same action habit, we have been encouraged to choose something different from our peers. Action habits can be, but are not limited to, football skills, drawing, juggling, basketball shooting, typing, knot tying or building, etc…

Our action habits were recorded over the term to measure our improvement. Improvement was checked by the student performing the skill — either by how long they could do the skill, how well they could do it, or how much their score out of 10 improved from start to finish.

Each student had to complete a sheet before doing their action habits. This included explaining how they were going to do their skill/s, how they would record their progress, and what their goals were by the end of the term.

Action habits have been a regular part of the St Brendan’s program. The skills students have learned could become lifelong habits that might be used in everyday life, or they could help students improve in sports. Action habits have been one of the parts of St Brendan’s that has made our time different from a regular school term — and it was something that many students enjoyed.

Fitness Sessions at Dunnstown

By Leni Romein, Keesha Robertson, Imi Corcoran, and Annabelle Lethlean

As part of the St Brendan’s program, on Mondays and Thursdays, we walk down to the footy-netball ground to do fitness sessions that last for 1 hour and 10 minutes. This includes a 10 minute walk there and a 10 minute walk back.

We play a variety of games, including Chuck the Chicken – a team game that uses a rubber chicken and lots of mad running around. We also play a game that involves bean bags. You go head to head with another team and try to throw the bean bag into a bucket. The team that gets the most bean bags in the bucket wins and moves into a championship round. The games are really fun and much better than just running laps.

In two of our fitness sessions, the boys and girls split up. The girls played netball while the boys played footy. When we played netball, we had a round-robin with three teams. The team that wasn’t playing stood on the side and practised shooting goals. We swapped roles and positions regularly. Before we started, we did netball warm-ups with Mrs Goonan.

The beep test activities were less popular. We were put into teams of around four and had to take turns running. If you didn’t reach the end line before the beep, you had one more chance. If you missed twice in a row, you were out. It was very team-based and encouraged us to support each other.

Our fitness sessions have been fun, challenging and have taught us many things.

FITNESS at St. Brendan’s

By Flynn Sullivan and Patrick Lewis

In Week 6 on Thursday we played a game of footy with two 20-minute halves and teams of 16. The match-up was Red v Blue and the score was Red 7.3.45 defeated Blue 6.4.40.

The game was played at the Dunnstown Recreation Reserve, which is a five minute walk from St Brendan’s, up Old Melbourne Road.

Jobe Blazko kicked three goals for Team Blue at Full Forward while Ash Norris kicked three for Red. Ray Clarke dominated the midfield for Blue and Levi Dunn, Team Red’s Centre Half Forward, kicked two goals.

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During Week 8 we played a zone game with teams of nine in which the goal was to cross a line guarded by the other team. Blue had to cross the Red team’s zone to the other side and Red had to cross Blue’s zone.

If you got tagged in the other team’s zone, you had to stay there unless you got rescued by someone else on your team. Then both of you would have to return to your zone together.

We played multiple games with four teams – Blue, Red, Yellow and Green. Blue won most of the games. Fast runners dominated the wings and there were safeties in case people got past the front line.

Butter making

By Annie O’Kelly and Alannah Gillett

We made butter recently. First, we got a jar with a lid and filled it halfway with fresh cream. Then we shook the jar for about 50 minutes. At the 20-minute mark, it turned into whipped cream. By 40 minutes, it started to curdle and separate from the liquid. At the 50-minute mark, it had become a solid ball with buttermilk around it. The consistency was semi-soft, slimy to touch, and yellow in colour. The mixture smelled like sour milk.

The final step was to take the butter out of the jar and place it in iced water. We rolled it into a ball to squeeze out all the excess buttermilk. Then we wrapped it in Glad Wrap and let it rest on the bench for five minutes.

Ms McMahon made some fresh scones in the morning. We had the butter on the scones, and it was delicious. There were also different jams to choose from.

It was interesting to learn how butter is made. A hundred years ago, this was how people made their butter, and it would have been very time-consuming. We’re glad we can just buy it at the supermarket now.

Chair making

By Darcy Cross and Lucas Stout

A few weeks ago, at St Brendan’s we made flatpack chairs out of cardboard. It was a difficult task, but we still finished it in the time we had.

We had two sessions to do this task. Each session was around an hour long. The way we made our chairs was by putting cardboard together. Each chair had to be a flatpack, which meant it had to fold down flat and be stored easily.

There was a test after we finished making our chairs. We had to put a brick on them to see if they would hold the weight. In the test, we had sixty seconds to put our chairs together.

Overall, chair making was a fun task and we enjoyed it. Our chair was successful. It held the weight of the brick. In this task we learned that it is hard to make a chair out of cardboard that can hold a brick.

ST BRENDAN’S WOOD SHED

Designed, Built and Written By Matthew Nairn & Ray Clark

These last few weeks we have been designing and finally starting to build a wood shed, to store the fire wood and the wood chopping wood so it doesn’t get wet. It took us some time to finally start building but, with Paul’s help, we have pretty much finished the structure for the shed.

We have concreted two of the posts into the ground and finished the wood cutting for the structure. Tomorrow we will concrete the other two posts in and screw all the framing on for the sides. Then we will need to get some tin for the roof and the walls and also possibly some pallets for the flooring. We may even build our own flooring for the base with some left-over wood, if there is any.

At the end of the building process, we will put all the wood in from the pile and the wood for the wood chopping. We may even add solar power. By the end of the term we should be all done.

Lambs

By Kotah Lewis and Sienna Pearse

On Friday, we had 4-week-old lambs come to St Brendan’s. There were 3 lambs and their names were Tiny Tim, Wonder and Bryan.

In our action habit groups, we were able to go over and feed them. We experienced bottle feeding, letting them eat from our hands and we were also able to hold them.

The owners were Freddy’s parents. They were very excited to show us their lambs. They saved the lambs from a farm that couldn’t take care of them due to the drought. If they had been left there they would have died. The lambs got kept inside a pen, in front of the wood fire to keep them warm and safe.

Overall the experience with the lambs was one of our highlights throughout the Dunnstown program. It was something different but definitely fun. The lambs were an unusual yet enjoyable moment that most people will remember.