Science Faculty – Serena Gilligan
The theme for Science Week 2025 was ‘Decoding the Universe’. This year the Science department was busy building cohesion in our new vertical homerooms with a little bit of healthy competition. Homerooms were kept busy across the week solving complex science crosswords, competing in time pressured trivia, and matching animals to their footprints.
Congratulations to the following groups who worked together to win their homeroom a prize:
Crossword decoding – Baggot 1 (Mr Trevillion)
Time pressured Trivia – Baggot 2 (Mrs Owen)
Animal Footprint Match – Frayne 3 (Mr Lee)
Lunchtimes were equally busy across the week with lunchtime science trivia and a scavenger hunt that required students to decode a number of critical thinking activities. Students needed to solve each code before they were given the location of the next. Congratulations to all of the students who successfully completed the hunt solving some complex DNA sequencing codes, ASCII binary code breakers, periodic table puzzles and the following Ceasar cipher code.
Have a go!
| Challenge: A message is encrypted using Caesar Cipher which uses a 3 letters shift. Task: Decrypt the message. Wklv lv d vhfuhw phvvdjh |
Scavenger hunt decoding winners were:
Ist place – Year 10 – Maddison Vilivili, Ruby Renshaw & Georgia Pike
2nd place – Year 11 – Amelia Baillon and Isabella Smith
3rd place – Year 7 – Elyse Murray and Gloria Ray Gallego
Science Trivia on Friday at lunch was run by our Year 11 Science students with a massive turn out of students competing. Both first and second place prizes went to two of our Year 10 teams. Congratulations to all who played along and got involved in all of the activities across the week.
1st – Year 10 – Mia Murray, Addison Bennett, Ruby Hoggan, Nikita Sullivan, Rosie Barnes & Eliana Maceri
2nd – Year 10 – Abby Daley, Olivia Sinclair, Sage Nicholson & Tannah Moore
During classes across the week, special activities were incorporated into the topics each year group was studying. These included:
Year 7 making lolly plant and animal cells to consolidate their understanding of Cells.
Year 8 performing heart dissections to deepen their understanding of the circulatory system in their Staying Alive unit.
Year 9 have been investigating the effectiveness of their hand washing technique, as well as swabbing the school to see where the greatest number of germs are hiding in plain sight using agar plates for collection. This was to support their understanding of the OLM Hospital unit investigating disease and the immune system.
Year 10 have been making Origami DNA and performing DNA line dancing to model the structure and replication of DNA while studying their Genetics unit.
Year 7 & 8 were also lucky enough to attend the STEMania incursion to kick off their Science week activities. The incursion illustrated how STEM plays a crucial role in decoding the universe, and how it is both fun and relevant to our everyday lives.
Students investigated how technology can be used to solve everyday problems and explore the universe. They also considered the engineering principles involved in designing, testing and refining an idea to create functioning flying cars.
The incursion was designed to inspire curiosity and a love of learning of all things STEM in our stage 4 students.
A special thank you goes to our amazing science teachers, lab assistant, homeroom teachers and senior science students who supported the activities across the week.
Mrs Serena Gilligan
Acting Instructional Leader of Curriculum – Science