Houses

Benedicta is named after Maria Sybilla Reipp, who was also known as Mother Benedicta. She was a person whose life was inspired by the art of music. She said these words, “Let the music from your heart guide you.” From this we take away knowing that whatever we do, we need to listen to our heart and let it guide us in how we act, how we interact with others, and how we live our lives.

As Benedicta Leaders we have important roles and responsibilities that we performed, including at House time, sport carnivals, assemblies and showing the Loreto values as role models for our peers. In House Sport this year, we have had so many opportunities to get to know the different girls in our House. We loved interacting with Year 5 and 6 during this time. Doing House Sport is a great way to practice communication skills and build your confidence. Unfortunately, at the start of Semester 2 we were in lockdown, so as leaders we had to adjust and find creative and fun games for the girls to do on Zoom. There are three sports carnivals in the Primary School. Not only did we succeed in many of them, but we also had heaps of fun. From swimming our hearts out in the pool, to running as fast as we could on the oval, we always tried our best. That’s the Benedicta spirit! As House Leaders it was so fun and extremely rewarding to lead the Benedicta Babes in cheers and to congratulate each member when they tried their best. Not to mention the abundance of lollies that were handed out on those days! Lockdown this year was a very difficult time for everyone, but especially us leaders. We had many challenges to face like how to adapt House Sport and Assemblies for the virtual environment. We were really challenged to learn and evolve our leadership skills – but we were up for the task! We learned to adapt and adopted the theme of “what will be will be”.

Our experience of being Benedicta House Leaders is one will always cherish. We have learnt to adjust to changes, connect with different Loreto students and staff, and make our voices heard.

Benedicta

Lucinda Durston, Sasha Buchanan, Eva Cusick & Lara Vuckovic

“From swimming our hearts out in the pool, to running as fast as we could on the oval, we always tried our best. That’s the Benedicta spirit!”

Clare

We have all been lucky enough to have the amazing opportunity to be Clare House leaders for 2021! Clare is clearly the best house by far (no bias at all!) and we have been so fortunate to lead all the Clare girls throughout this year. We will miss our Clare bears next year as we head into the Senior School and are so proud of them and all they have achieved. From athletics carnivals to swimming carnivals, from cross country to House sport, Clare spirit has been with us through thick and thin. We have won a spirit cup together and we have cheered our hardest. Clare bears are supportive and we hold each other up to get to the finish line. When a Clare bear has succeeded in something or when someone is upset, we are all there to help and encourage them. Chanting the chants at the top of our lungs is what we do best.

House time this year has been so much fun. From survival tag to Kahoots, as Clare leaders we have had to come up with so many ideas to keep Clare bears entertained. At lunch times, we would talk to Miss Ball about ideas that we had for House sport. To keep our girls motivated, Gabi and Juliet had a bear and a frog that the most well-behaved girl would take home and take care of for a week. This bear has been handed down from past leaders and means a lot to Clare. Olive and Annie had a crazy lolly box filled with so many different kinds of lollies, and this really inspired everyone to give their very best at House Sport! For Semester 2 leaders, most of our time as leaders was spent online. We had to work around the unusual obstacles of online learning. Leadership had to be done in a different way. For example, House sport over Zoom looked vastly different. We had activities like drawing videos, Just Dance, yoga, go noodles, quizzes and so much more fun stuff to bring the girls together. Being a leader through home schooling has made us grow. It was a very unique experience, so we had to rely on each other a lot and Miss Ball and Miss Speter were always on hand to help. This has made us more independent, enabled us to get creative, and hopefully we brought some fun and excitement to the end of each week.

We now realise it was a pretty cool experience that not many people go through and wouldn’t change a thing. It’s been a year we will never forget and we would like to thank Miss Ball, Miss Speter and all the Primary School staff involved for making Clare the absolutely awesome powerhouse it was in 2021.

Olive Ledwidge, Juliet De Zotti, Gabi Connell & Annie Goodall

“Clare bears are supportive and we hold each other up to get to the finish line.”

Dorothea

We were lucky to be the Dorothea House leaders for 2021! We are so happy that we have had the chance to work with the Dorothea Dinosaurs. This year, we learnt a lot while working with the girls. They still showed a lot of spirit even in lockdown when it was tough. They did their best when it came to House Sport, working in a team, building friendships and working online. We faced many challenges, but we all worked together to pass them and move forward. Being leaders has taught us to be patient, flexible and to adapt to ever-changing circumstances. In the lockdown period we were not at school, so we had to use the flexibility skills instilled in us to brainstorm creative ideas to keep House spirit alive. Dorothea made our job easy as they were happy to do anything as long as it involved connecting as a House. In House sport the girls joined in the activities and games and always paid attention to what the leaders were saying. In Semester 2, due to COVID, we had to do House sport in year groups, so we got to work with other leaders and students from different Houses. Every two weeks, we got the chance to run assembly and play fun games with everyone. We would do little PowerPoints about ourselves to teach the girls a little about us. We also played games and the girls got to participate and win points for their House. House points are a good way to reward good behaviour. We have found that this was a fun and easy way to reward the girls who have been displaying the school values, showing sportsmanship and being responsible. At the end of the week, the leaders take turns in tallying up all the points from across Years 5 and 6. At the end of the semester, the winning House gets an extra House sport session as a reward for their hard work.

When carnivals are announced, the leaders get very excited and start getting ready straight away. Teaching Dorothea chants was easy as everyone cooperated and worked together. Dorothea works hard to try their best in their races but knows that it is not about winning, it is about having fun and making memories together. Over the past two years we have loved working with Dorothea and are sad to leave the Primary School. We have made so many memories and friendships. It was an honour leading Dorothea and we will forever miss it.

Alyssa Blackman, Alyssa Bouchahine, Briony Bridges & Porsha Gill

“Dorothea works hard to try their best in their races, but knows that it is not about winning, it is about having fun and making memories.”