Mercy News

On Sunday, 18 August six College Cultural Ensembles performed at the annual Mackay Orchestra and Bands Competition held at Mackay Christian College. It was a successful day for our ensembles with the opportunity for each of them to receive some feedback on their performances in preparation for the Eisteddfod in Term 4. Congratulations to Mrs Carmen Bennett, Mr Tim McClelland, Mr Sam Bauer and Mrs Chelsea Jansen for their hard work in preparing their ensembles. We are very proud to announce the following awards were presented:

• Handbells Ensemble – Silver Award
• Concert Percussion – Silver Award
• Concert Band – Silver Award
• Stage Band – Silver Award
• Drum Corps – Gold Award
• Strings Ensemble – Gold Award

This semester in Year 9 Civics and Citizenship, the students are studying Democracy and the Media. They started with political cartooning and after learning about the aspects and fundamentals of a political cartoon, they then had a go at creating their own cartoon. The students had to use the elements they had studied when analysing and came up with their own cartoon based around a social or political topic. Here is an example of what they produced.

On Monday 19 August, Mercy’s finest chess players took on the pride of Mackay in the Gardiner Interschool Chess Competition. The 6 boys were entered in the open category, taking on senior students from the Mackay region. Each player was required to play 7 games in a round robin style event. With guidance from chess coach Lincoln De Thomasis and Brett Comerford, the team improved and eventually found themselves in a fierce battle with the heavy weights from North Mackay State High.

As the day wound to a close, the team felt they might have done enough to edge out the defending champions. Unfortunately, with a couple of stalemates, the boys fell just half a point short of usurping the North team. All team members deserve congratulations for their behavior, effort and ability on the day. Particularly Kai-Yi Comerford, who won the individual event and has now been crowned the ‘Best Student Chess Player’ in Mackay.

In Semester 1, a small group of Year 7 Geography students were introduced to completing their Place and Livability assessment using Minecraft Edu Ed. This pilot program was very successful and we are now introducing Minecraft Edu Ed into the College in Semester 2, to all of our Year 7 students in the Geography unit.

Students were asked, “What did you get out of completing the Minecraft task? Describe your feelings; did you enjoy working on it?”

• I felt pride in accomplishing hard work at the end of my Minecraft. I really enjoyed doing this and helping others. I recommend this task to everyone.
• I did mostly enjoy working on Minecraft as it was easier to experiment with designs rather than doing a paper copy. However, as I got closer to the due date there was a lot to do and it was quite stressful.

Students assisted the Apostolic Church sort donated clothing to be recycled and sent overseas to the Philippines. They had the huge task of sorting bags and bags of donated clothing into ladies, men, boys, girls and babies winter and summer clothing. After 1½ hours of sorting many bags, larger bags were packed and ready to distribute to their new homes in the Philippines.

Students went shopping at Canelands for the Stella Maris Christmas shoe box appeal. They had fun buying the following gifts to put inside the shoe boxes: small address books, toiletries (non-aerosol), fishing gear - hooks, sinkers, fishing line reels, playing cards, torches, batteries, souvenir biros/pens, writing sets, socks and handkerchiefs.

On Sunday, some Mercy staff attended Zonta’s Birthing Kits’ assembly day at Holy Spirit College. Many kit bags were packed with the simplest of items to help women in poorer countries have a few necessities needed for child birth.