‘City Experience 2008’ has been a very educational, exciting and fun activity for Year 9 students this

year. It has involved a great deal of hard work and goodwill by teachers and students and I am very pleased to say that it has been a very successful and rewarding experience for all participants.
The City Experience involved our Year 9 students spending a week in the City in action-based learning teams and programs. Our Year 9s were split into 2 groups prior to their week in the city and these groups were further split into teams of 6 students. The preparation stage involved students developing a big idea (Theme) such as Tourism, Homelessness, Leisure, Safety etc and students further refined this big idea developing a hypothesis and conducting surveys and interviews.

Students also participated in the following Workshops/ activities:
Scavenger Hunt, Jim Styne’s Reach foundation workshop, Fitness first, Syn Fm Radio Workshop, Urban Seed Homelessness workshop, Collingwood Football Club Lexus Centre workshop, Queen Victoria market activities, and Creative Conversations.

Students continued into Term 4 of the post-city experience program by having a full day celebration of their efforts set aside especially for them. This involved students coming together as a group and compiling their information and data. They talked about their experiences and explained their research results via an oral and PowerPoint presentation in the library. We then had a BBQ in the bridge area for all Year 9 students and teachers involved in the City Experience. This was followed up by a debriefing session and concluded with activities to finish off the day.

Thanks

to every one who assisted in this year’s program—your help was much appreciated.
Mark Di Marzio