31 of our Senior School Music students participated and hosted the Royal South Street All Abilities Performing Arts Eisteddfod Extravaganza over the 6th and 7th of September 2023 at the FARM campus.
The event was co-planned with Melba Performing Arts and the 2023 VET Music Students. The community came out in droves with standing room only left up the back for majority of the schedule performances.
Through collaboration, it was the 2nd year where the Eisteddfod decided to move away from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place structure and instead move towards awards that recognised growth, attitude, potential and originality.

Out of the 42 acts performed over the 2 days, our students were recognised with 14 different awards that were well deserved for both their individual and group work, dedication and attitude.

Not only were the staff proud of the students during their acts, but even more so of the positivity, support and encouragement they showed each other.

• Encouragement Award - Tianna - Vocal Solo - Firework
• Encouragement Award - 'The Baby Bears' (Sky and Michael) - Duo - Forever After All
• Encouragement Award - Faith - Vocal Solo - Titanium
• Encouragement Award - The Blood Thirsty Bats (Christine, Josh, Jaspa, Jessica, Michael, Dylan, Braiyden, Owen, Sky Scofield ) - Big Band Number - Demons

• Rising Star Award - Dylan - Solo performance, self accompanied vocal performance - Perfect
• Rising Star Award - Owen - Drum Solo - Do What You Like
• Rising Star Award - 'The Bing Bongs' (Tahlia and Shakira) - Duo - Love Story
• Original Take Award - Jaspa - Vocal Solo - Lovely

• Leadership in the Arts Award - BSS Dance Group (Dance Cap PLC1: Jessica & Dance Cap PLC2: Isabell + Taj Hayley, Blake , Aaliya, Em, Tianna, Emma, Faith, Sophie) -Group Dance - Black Magic
• Leadership in the Arts Award - Braiyden - Guitar Solo - Hold the Line

• Participation Award for an amazing Performance - Calais - Vocal Solo - She Used to be Mine
• Participation Award for an amazing Performance - Sky - Vocal Solo - Sober
• Participation Award for an amazing Performance - Dylan and Jordan - Duo - Hallelujah and mid show entertainment Bob marly Medley.

• Attitude is Everything Award - BSS Junk Band (Jordan, Loughlin, Paige, Tianna, Darcy, Emma, Blake, Charlotte) - We Will Rock You

The Senior Campus at Ballarat Specialist School is very excited to be joining with Country Grocers in Skipton for a 2nd year after a very successful pilot year in 2022. For those unaware, this wonderful opportunity came into fruition last year when past teacher, Ben Decis offered us this valuable program.

Ben and his family own and operate Country Grocers and have 5 stores in the region: Skipton, Trentham, Avoca, Smythesdale, and Ballan. For the last 23 year’s Ben’s family have been one of the many independent family-owned businesses that operate Grocery Stores in small town markets that sit at the heart of local communities across Australia.
This year Country Grocers are proud to have put in the hard work to become their own enterprise and completely independent to IGA. Even with this massive change to their business and the challenges it has presented, Country Grocers has made the return of this program a priority and were committed to finding time to offer us this amazing work experience program. We are exceptionally lucky.

Once more, Ben and his Country Grocers team have offered to turn the Skipton supermarket into an operating training hub for 11 of our year 11 and 12 students. Ben, his store managers Ashlee and Courtney, and his other chosen staff, along with two supporting staff from BSS, join the students each Wednesday in Term 3 to support them learning valuable retail skills that may assist them in gaining employment in the future.

From the moment students enter the store each Wednesday they are treated as though they are employees, dressed in appropriate Country Grocers uniform and name tags. The students have already learnt beneficial information on how a supermarket operates from day to day, including many of the behind the scenes’ aspects.

The students are all given tasks to complete that include: basic retail principles like rotating stock or ‘FIFO’ (first in, first out), the importance of stock placement and presentation on shelves, building customer displays, training on the register and serving customers, helping when new stock arrives, store walks with Ashlee and Courtney looking at what needs to be done to make retail stores operate, and allocated time to complete the Country Grocers induction modules.

Discussions with the students about the program so far have been brilliant, and the general consensus is how enthusiastic they are to be part of this program. For many students participating in the program this year, it is a massive step towards them breaking out of comfort zones and anxiety, to now applying themselves completely to all required tasks and excelling at job skills they didn't even know they could do. Ben’s message to the students is clear “we’ve put this whole program together for students to gain employment experience that they can take into the real world, so come in, get stuck in and do your best. If you make mistakes, let’s figure out why and how and work together to fix it so when it happens again you know what to do. But there’s no “I can’t do that”. Mistakes are just opportunities to learn and do better.” There is no greater value than watching young adults that doubted themselves, achieve such success. It is also lovely to see students greeting customers in a friendly and cheerful manner, and they are delighted by many of the customers interest in what they are doing and wishing them well.

We feel this is a very rare and invaluable opportunity for students, and once again we are exceedingly grateful to Ben, his family and staff for providing our students with a chance to build their retail job skills, and in many respects their life skills, that they can carry onto their future pathways.

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 Over the past four weeks our Grade 6 students have been participating in an Art Therapy program which has been focusing on supporting their transition from Primary School into Middle School. Each week had a different focus for the students to express themselves through art work; creating a safe space, my chill/Zen place, gratitude boxes and celebration/achievements.

Below are photos of the students art work along with comments from students who participated in the program:

Olivia– I liked everything.
Tipene– It was great. I liked creating new things.
Peter– I liked painting my hands with blue crayon.
Jack- I liked doing the happy boxes.
Blair – Painting party hat.
Manon – I thought it was nice and I enjoyed it. I liked creating all of the art but I didn’t like missing out on play.
Robbie – I liked doing painting and making my magic box.
Kaden – I liked doing the painting.
Cameron – I liked Annette, she looked adorable. I liked making the graduation hat
Grady – Making the graduation hat was cool.
Harper – I liked drawing balloons.
Lincoln – I liked the art.
Ethan – I liked talking about feelings like being nervous and I liked drawing about my feelings and breathing. It was peaceful. Annette was nice.

We would like to congratulate our amazing senior school students that have been awarded their full VET Certificates this year. Students have worked hard over the year, and in some cases over 2 years to be granted a Vocational Educational Training certificate in their chosen industry. Their dedication and commitment has been wonderful to see, especially their joy when they learnt they would be receiving their completed certificate.

Certificate II Sport and Recreation
Joshua Taylor
Harry Dobbin
Bailey Ohlsen

Certificate II Kitchen Operations
Shakira Heath
Lily Terry
Jasmine Nanscawen
Eloise Buck
Elizabeth Maver
Braiyden Oakley

Certificate II Horticulture
Luke Bullen
Charlie King
Michael Haywood
Harrison Norman
Brendan Casley
Orrin Cooper-Donaldson
Eli Flatman

Certificate II Animal Studies
Ainsley McKenzie

In total this year we have had 80 senior school students enrolled in a VET certificate, this includes 8 high support students enrolled in Certificate 1 in Life Skills. We are extremely proud of all the students efforts and willingness to try hard in their VET studies. In 2023 we have many students pursing the 2nd year of their chosen VET course, as well as some new VET courses on offer. Students are able to choose from the VET certificates taught onsite at the FARM that include: Life Skills, Kitchen Operations/Cookery, Sport and Recreation, Visual Arts, Retail, Music Industry and Horticulture. Students are also able to choose from a range of VET courses offered off-site through the Highlands LLEN VET cluster.

Below photos: Bailey and Josh who have been awarded their Certificate II Sport

On Thursday 25th August 2022 Ballarat Specialist School celebrated Book Week.
Students and Staff dressed as their favourite book character and were able to parade their costumes for all to see. The students danced and had lots of fun at the parades.

Classes read stories and participated in activities related to the books from the CBCA awards.
The junior School took part in a Butterfly Scavenger Hunt where they had to find the letters behind the butterflies and unscramble the letters to make the book week theme “Dreaming with eyes open”.

The Book Swap was an opportunity for students to donate a book and swap it for another. There were some wonderful books donated by the school community.

The colouring in competition was drawn with many students receiving a prize.

You can see them displayed in the Administration area at the Gillies Street Campus.
It was a funday with lots of smiles and laughter

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