Curriculum

Our Year 10 Engineering students began their aerospace engineering course this year looking at the history of human space flight and exploration.  As part of this topic each student undertook research on a space mission of their choice, and produced a popular science-style article about that mission.

This week, Samantha Trafford writes about the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn.

As a community, we have been considering the merits of International Baccalaureate (IB) programs in the Merici context since 2016.  Our early investigations found a high level of alignment between the existing Merici Mission and Vision Statement and Principles of Powerful Learning and the IB Mission statement and IB Learner Profiles. The IB’s focus on inquiry learning also reflected Merici’s pedagogical approach to teaching and learning, while providing additional teaching resources and research-based support underpinning the programs.

Merici College fielded two teams in the ACT Titration Stakes on Tuesday evening.  In a competition valuing technical skill and precision, teams must determine the concentration of a solution of sodium hydroxide and then use this to further determine the concentrations of three separate solutions of acetic acid.

Today is National Simultaneous Storytime, an event organised by the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) where many libraries and schools across Australia and New Zealand read a story together as part of the Library and Information Week celebrations. 

On 7 March 2018, twelve senior students participated in our very first Australian Computational and Linguistics Olympiad (OzClo). OzClo is contest for high school students that combines computational thinking and linguistics, challenging them to develop their own strategies for solving problems in fascinating real languages. We are very pleased that Merici was able to field three teams of Year 11 and 12 students in this year’s competition.

On Monday the 7th and 14th of May Merici hosted groups of Deputy Principals from South Korea. The visit was part of their university training to qualify as a school principal. The training requires them to visit schools in another country. Their specific purpose in visiting Merici was to look at the Kitchen Garden. Fiona Buining (Sustainability Teacher) and Bec De Courcy (Sustainability Officer) talked to the group about the garden via the competent translator, Jae, who had organised the tour schedule. They loved our garden and spent significant time looking at the plants growing.

Sister-school Relationship with Tieyi School in Xi’an, China

Exciting news for Mandarin! We have successfully establishing a sister-school relationship with Tieyi School in Xi’an, China. Xi’an is an ancient Chinese city and had been the capital city of various Chinese dynasties and, of course, the home to the famous terra-cotta warriors. The main objective of this relationship is to develop friendship and cooperation between Tieyi School and Merici College and, most importantly, to promote cross-cultural understanding and awareness between Australia and China.

This year, students at Merici have had their first chance to explore Human Biology as a subject for Senior study. Unit 1, ‘The Essentials of Human Life’ explores the nature of stem cells, in both embryonic and adult contexts, and challenges students to apply this knowledge to the emerging field of tissue engineering. Last week, our Merici girls were challenged by graduate students from the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science to transfer their knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of various tissue types to the field of prosthetics.

For upcoming events and news, please follow the link http://merici.college/go/whats-on-wk4and5.