Year 7 retreat is the cohort’s first retreat at school and was held on 8 March 2024 in the auditorium. Leading the retreat was the NET group (National Evangelization Team) and was assisted by several senior prefects.
The NET group have many volunteers trained to go around schools and parishes to teach them the love of Jesus.
The theme of the retreat was ‘Un-titled’. Before we got into the activities the NET group told us about the expectations for the day: Respect, Positive, Invest and most importantly have FUN! The first activity we did was to get us moving so we played ‘All in Tag’. We were then split into ‘small groups’ and tasked with some ice breaking questions to get everyone involved and share their opinion on the question. These groups were also used to encourage discussions within a safe environment.
Afterwards the NET team took turns introducing themselves to us. A fun fact from one of them is they love Taylor Swift. We then played an opinion game, ‘agree, middle, disagree’ which was super fun. A random or controversial question was put onto the projector, for example: Do you always have to be popular to be a leader? There were many other questions to get us excited and to help us understand that everyone has different opinions.
After Interval, we played a game of life maze, which was challenging as we were not allowed to talk, point, or give clues to anyone in our team. There were three teams and group two ended up winning. We then played a couple other small games – Heads or tails, tangled & evolution. Tangled was incredibly fun, interactive and challenging.
After an early lunch we attended Mass at St Luke’s Parish. After Mass we went back to the auditorium and watched a little drama act the NET team performed. Once they finished their performance, we did a little reflection sheet to end off the day. It was a fun day, and we are sure everyone enjoyed it.
Overall, the retreat was an awesome day for all of us year 7’s. A huge thanks to the NET team for coming along, seniors for helping and of course, Ms. Oliver for planning the retreat.
