Year 8

GJS Events: Halloween, Book Week, and National Heroes Day.

In October and November, GJS students enjoyed a series of events, such as Halloween Week, Book Week, and National Heroes Day. All of the secondary students, including year 8 were excited to participate in the events.

Who doesn’t like Halloween? Halloween is an event where the students can express their creativity by following the theme. Halloween week was organized by the student council and held on 25 -29 October 2021. There were some interesting competitions in which secondary students can join, such as spooky tik tok competitions, dress-up challenges, and creepy arts challenges. This year, 8B won two of the competitions. Aurelie who won the art competitions and Anika became the runner-up for a dress-up competition with the theme ‘The Adams Family’. The Halloween week was concluded with a Halloween movie night, where each year level spent Friday night watching a movie together. In year 8, we watched “The Quiet Place”. All the students and teachers who supervised the movie night enjoyed the time watching the movie and at the same time interacted with each other in the chat.

Book Week, held between November 1st - 5th, has been an annual tradition dedicated to spreading the joy of reading. There are various activities during book week, such as Extreme Reading & Instagram Book Review competitions, "What Should I Read Next?" where teachers & students share their favorite books in a jamboard during morning advisory. Students were inspired to read various types of books suggested by others. The students also got the chance to join a meet and interact with an author, named Richard Sobol. What made the event more interesting is that on the last day of the book week we could dress up as our favourite book character throughout the day.

The last activity that students enjoyed in November was the commemoration of national heroes day on 10th November. We had a whole school flag ceremony which we attended virtually via the GJS youtube channel during the morning advisory. From this activity, the students learned to appreciate the heroes who have fought for Indonesian Independence and bring positive changes for Indonesia. There were also photography and video competitions during National heroes week.

Student’s Corner

Year 8 Digital Design

Design to me is an interesting subject that involves creativity and analysis. Before MYP, I have always been drawn to Design, but never really had an opportunity to learn more about it on a technical level. In Year 7, I was introduced to the basic concepts of Digital Design and was able to identify that Design on its own depended on your personal perspective and creativity. Though, now that I am in Year 8, in these past two terms I was newly introduced to Product Design. I now know that yes, the design does depend on your own perspective, but product design requires you to go even further and also consider your client’s wishes. The Design class truly helped me nurture and grow my ability to do so.

At the beginning of this academic year, the teacher gave us an explanation of Product Design basics and assigned us a brief case study task to get started in applying the knowledge we gained. The case study was to design packaging for McDonald’s Indonesian Independence Day meal; Rendang Burger. I created a mood board to visualize the ideas (color scheme, graphics, etc.) and brand attributes, then moved on to creating initial sketches, and lastly the final design. Throughout the process of this first task, I felt that I received meaningful input, and was able to use the suggestions to improve in the upcoming tasks. I think this was a useful project, in seeing what real-world product design is like, especially by using a real and popular brand.

For the latest task, the teacher provided choices, to either create seasonal packaging for Starbucks, or a mascot for KCIC (PT. Kereta Cepat Indonesia China) that relevantly represents its marketing strategy. I chose to create a mascot for KCIC, in order to explore a different creative process for a different product. The whole process was enjoyable, as I gained experience in following the steps of the design cycle from a product design point of view. (Research, Design Brief, Design Specifications, Moodboard, Design Ideas Sketches, Final Product Creation + Exploration of merchandise creation using MockUps.) I had to consider aspects of brand identity, to ensure that even the color and animal of the mascot I was creating, aligned with KCIC. The teacher also gave feedback for a higher quality of work, which I think was very useful and impactful.

Overall, I am pleased to have the opportunity to learn and enhance my design skills, through the variety of realistic and beneficial projects I was assigned, as well as the direct significant feedback. I have learned that when it comes to design, everyone does have their own take on it, and when provided with expectations from a brand, everyone can interpret it differently. (Anika Alijana Siahaan 8B)

Student's achievement: Australian Mathematics Competition (Ausmac).

The competition I joined was the Australian Mathematics Competition (Ausmac). It was an online competition held on the 5th of August, 2021. There were a total of 30 questions with 25 of them being multiple choice and the last 5 being essays. It was an international math competition so there were participants outside of the country/region, but some schools were hosting the competition here. I joined the competition because it was held before school started and I wanted to do something during my summer break. I got a distinction award which means that I got the Top 20% in my year/region cohort. The competition didn't really affect me in my learning much but it helped to motivate me to start joining more math competitions. I will keep joining these competitions in the future too because I think that it helps me to set goals while also continuously measuring my capabilities in math. (Christophe 8C)