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Harmony & Languages Week
This year, the Languages Department combined Harmony Day and Languages Week to celebrate Australia’s diversity and multiculturalism.
The celebrations began with the daily 7:30 am Harmony Week Question du jour on SEQTA Notices. The first student with the best answer won a canteen voucher each morning. At 8 am, the EP Championship was launched until 8 pm on Friday. Students from Years 6 to 8 answered over 145,000 questions in French, Mandarin, Dutch, Italian, Indonesian, Portuguese and many other languages. Four students won Gold Awards, one Silver and three Bronze. All Award recipients are invited to collect their EP certificate at the pizza lunch this week on Thursday in the Chinese Room (C5).
St Mark’s students and staff had the opportunity to taste some international food with Wally’s Taco Van and Miam Miam French Crêpes. On Harmony Day, for a gold coin donation, students wore orange to share the message that in Australia, “Everybody Belongs”, while our Year 6 students had fun dressing up for a traditional dress competition. Over $1000 was donated to the international not-for-profit NGO Médecins Sans Frontières Australia (Doctors Without Borders).
2024 saw the first edition of the Harmony Games with two international sports tournaments: football and Chinese Jianzi. Over 65 students were involved in the games at recess and lunch throughout Harmony Week. In Middle School, we had eight teams from Year 6 to Year 8. In Senior School, there were two Year 9 and 12 teams, one Year 10 and one staff team including Mr Teo, Mr Adam, Mr Dickens, Mr Quirk, Mrs Clayton, Mr Bastow and Reverend Davis. The only Year 6 team, the Scorching Scorers, were incredible at eliminating two Year 7 teams before their defeat in the Grand Final against the Year 8 Strikerz, the Harmony Games MS Football Champion.
The Year 7 All Stars were so strong that they had penalty shootouts against the Strikerz at recess, with no goals from both teams and had to play the Strikerz again at lunch! The All-Stars demonstrated great sportsmanship.
Our Harmony Games SS Champion is the unbeatable Year 9 Bowen Ballers, who not only defeated the other Year 9 team but also the strongest Year 12 boys team, SK F.C. and the staff team in the Grand Final. Their future in the Harmony Games is bright!
All Harmony Games students were invited to meet Perth Glory players David Williams and Daniel Bennie, who came to St Mark’s to present the Harmony Games Champions’ trophies and medals, plus participate in a Q&A.
Our Jianzi Champion, Finley, won the Paris Saint Germain (PSG) football used in the MS Grand Final and had it signed by Perth Glory players David Williams and Daniel Bennie after demonstrating his jianzi skills to the professional footballers who also had a go, but who could not beat Finley’s score!
Mme Cat Harrison
Head of Languages