Alstonville High School Newsletter · 6/19/2019 · following activities: oomerangles [, Weaving,...

Alstonville High School Newsletter: Issue 9, 19 June 2019

Alstonville High School Newsletter

Developing future citizens and leaders of the community – life long learning!

Cawley Close Alstonville Phone: (02) 6628 5222 Web: alstonvill-h.schools.nsw.gov.au

Fax: (02) 6628 1223 Email: [email protected]

Issue 9 19 June 2019

Our strategic guiding question? How can we ensure that our students achieve at least one year’s worth of learning growth from one year’s worth of teaching?

Values

We value and support:

A positive, healthy and safe

learning environment

Respectful attitudes and

actions

Diversity

Pursuit of personal excellence

Service to community

Team work

Quality learning and teaching

Initiative, leadership and self-

discipline

Learning

We aspire to be:

Life-long learners

Creative and critical thinkers

Effective communicators

Skilled in literacy and numeracy

Independent and organised

Competent and innovative with

technology

Environmentally, socially and

culturally informed

Caring and compassionate

Alstonville High School

Our community values integrity

in all aspects of life

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

21 June Friday NC Cross Country

22 June Saturday Year 10 Leadership ‘Trivia Night’

26 June Wednesday P&C meeting 7pm

Youth Frontiers IT session – Ballina Coast 11am

28 June Friday NR Zone Athletics Carnival

5 July Friday Last day Term 2

Term 3

23 July Tuesday Students return for Term 3

24 July Wednesday P&C meeting 7pm

25 July Thursday NAIDOC Assembly

25 Aug – 31 Aug Mon - Sun Year 10 Snow Trip


Principal’s report

Thank you

To the students, staff and families who have been very cooperative and understanding as we have made adjustments to cope with

the extensive maintenance program being undertaken at the school. This work has required classroom and timetable changes.

Each day, there has been significant noise around the school and, most recently, we have had electrical outages. These outages

have resulted in SENTRAL going off line, impacting access to the portal and our ability to communicate with families around

absences, upcoming events and payments. Students have also had to help us as we have moved lockers around, in some cases

lockers have been out of use for a week whilst work was completed in that part of the school.

This work has also impacted on staff. We have had to halt the production of reports because of concerns about losing data due to

electrical outages and problems accessing SENTRAL. As a consequence of this experience we are moving SENTRAL from a local

server to a fully cloud based server so that we can deal with issues such as power outages in the future and access to SENTRAL

can occur even if there is work going on at school.

We apologise for any inconvenience but when you have a chance to visit the school and see the improvements that are occurring

I am sure you will agree that this is a very good example of undergoing some short term pain to achieve a significant long term

gain.

Last Week of term – Random Acts of Kindness Week

One of our focus areas over many years is to explore ways that we can better support the wellbeing of all members of the school

community – students, staff and families. As part of this focus this year we are trying one new initiative. We are asking everyone

associated with the school to make the last week of school a Random Acts of Kindness week. We are encouraging students, staff

and families to think of small, random acts of kindness that we can implement that can have a positive impact. If we can all make

at least one person feel a little better, a little more appreciated for a short period of time over that week then everyone wins. I

have attached a list of ideas that Mrs Christmas sent me that might inspire some innovative and positive thinking.

The importance of regular, active revision

Over the last month, I have been meeting with some of our students in years 11 and 12 to revise their recent school report and

discuss what strategies they might put in place to maximise the impact of their time at school. Whilst many of these students have

strategies in place that allow them to prepare for upcoming assessment tasks, exams or homework, very few of the students I

have spoken to have put in place strategies for regular revision of material covered over the last week.

The science around the way our brains work is clear on the importance of short, structured and active revision to aid both long

term and short-term memory. Doing regular revision also helps when it comes to applying knowledge and solving problems (linking

information from across subject areas or experiences).

Students do not have to spend hours of revision. This could be quite counter-productive. One strategy worth considering is what

I am calling the 10 minute learning sprint. All students have to do to make this strategy work for them is to spend 10 minutes a

day reflecting on what topics they have covered over the last week for each subject. They can go over class notes for the week

and highlight key phrases; they can start a fresh sheet of paper and brainstorm the main topics, exercise or skills they experienced.

Students could use the voice recorder on their mobile phone and dictate a list of topics and experiences they covered in a subject

over the week, and then listen to this recording. They could then produce a mind map or a graphic organiser or could compose a

text message and share with a friend. The possibilities are endless. The key principles are to do this each day during the week and

to produce an artefact of some kind. The following week you start with reviewing the previous artefact and then create a new

one. This will cause the brain to establish effective neural pathways and embed learning. If you are interested in learning a little

more about this follow the link to a website established by Dr Judy Willis, an American Neurologist that I heard speak recently -

Dr Judy Willis

Canteen Volunteers Remember:

Please volunteer for our school canteen. We need you – our students need your support

http://www.radteach.com/


Uniform News Overall, we have seen a big improvement in students wearing the correct uniform to school. I would like to thank students and

parents for their efforts in this regard, as staff at AHS certainly are noticing it.

A quick reminder of some of our uniform expectations include:

Junior jumpers are maroon and seniors grey

Shorts and long pants are grey (not black)

Long sleeves shirts under t-shirts are a great way to keep warm but they must be grey, white or maroon

School representative jumpers are permitted but not external teams and rep jumpers e.g. Far North Coast, Country Champs etc.

Hoodies are not permitted unless they are school rep jumpers e.g. CHS

Our first priority is for students to be at school and engaged. We do not want a student cold, and understand things happen that

mean they are out of uniform. In these instances, if they bring a note from parent they will generally be given a uniform note to

avoid detention.

If people have old uniforms at home, it would be appreciated if they could be dropped off at school so we can assist other students.

Drew Fox, Head Teacher Welfare

Curriculum Initiatives in English

Year 8 English - Multimodal representations of Shakespeare characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This term Year 8 students have been engaged with a close study of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Students

have participated in a range of class activities to increase their understanding of the characters and themes in these texts.

For their assessment, they were asked to design and construct a multimodal representation of ONE central figure and the values

this character embodies within the text. Then present their multimodal representation to the class, justifying the choices they

have made which would show a meaningful connection between the visual representation and the text.

**Please note: multi-modal focuses on a combination of text, audio and image as individual modes and how these can be

creatively combined to produce meaning and encourage interaction and learning in the classroom.

Attached are a series of images of the diverse range of highly imaginative and multi-skilled work created by the 8HP class.

Ms Kimberley Davenport

Alstonville High has upgraded its SENTRAL communication program. Access to SENTRAL

for staff, parents and students on the computer will now be through the following link:

https://alstonvillehs.sentral.com.au/

The SENTRAL app should still work as normal.

https://alstonvillehs.sentral.com.au/


Sport News

Waratah Cup Rugby Union

Alstonville High sent three teams last Tuesday to Grafton to participate in the Waratah Cup. The 14 yrs boys won all their games.

The 16’s boys had a win and a loss. The 16’s girls improved with each game and have joined the boys in advancing to the next

round. All teams will play again next Wednesday, and if successful will play in the state finals in Sydney. Well done to all players.

Touch

Congratulations to Charlie Turner from Year 10 for his selection in the North Coast Open Boys Touch Football Team. Charlie will

now compete at the NSWCHS Secondary Boys Touch State Carnival held at Dubbo from 2 – 4 July. Good Luck Charlie.

Football (Soccer)

Congratulations to Emma Eichorn from Year 11 who recently returned from the NSWCHSSA Secondary Girls Football

Championships held at Kirrawee. Emma enjoyed representing the North Coast Region at the State Championships and put in a

strong effort as part of the North Coast team. The teams were organised into four pools of 3 teams, with the top 2 teams

proceeding to the final series main draw and the bottom team going through to the 9th to 12th place round robin. The North Coast

team were put into Pool C. The North Coast team lost their first game to Sydney South West 3 to North Coast 0 and won their

second game North Coast 3 to Riverina 0. The North Coast Team had qualified for the final series. The North Coast Team had some

very close games in the final series against the CHS Invitation Team, South Coast and Sydney West. Well done Emma.

Paul Francis / Representative Sports Organiser.


STEM Youth Development Camp From Monday 3 June - Wednesday 5 June, eleven of our students attended the STEM Youth Development Camp run by the NSW

Aboriginal Education Consultative Group. The camp took place at Lake Ainsworth Sport and Recreation Centre in Lennox Head.

The aim of the camp was to empower students to be active learners in the areas of science, technology, engineering and

mathematics and inspire students who may be thinking of a career in STEM. Our group of students particularly enjoyed the

following activities: ‘Boomerangles’, ‘Weaving’, ‘Stringing Nature, Culture and Mathematics Along’ and ‘Fire by Friction’. All had a

great time.

Kelsey Knee/ATSI Programs Coordinator


TAS Information

Year 10 Textiles Technology:

The Textiles students have recently completed a major project based on free choice and they have achieved excellent results. The

following pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy viewing the wonderful work produced by our textiles students at Alstonville High

School.

Textiles Technology Workshop:

The Textiles students have recently attended and participated in a textile workshop. They learnt several new techniques; from silk

painting, geli plates to marbling. They had a wonderful time and were left being motivated to make more great textile things and

they achieved excellent results. The following pictures featured are of the workshop and the created samples. Enjoy viewing the

wonderful samples. We encourage these students and more to choose textiles as a subject to study at Alstonville High School in

2020.


TAS Subjects Term 2

The TAS students are well under way with new projects and we look forward to bringing you more pictorial updates as they come

to hand. This week we have some delicious breadcases pictures by year 7 Technology Mandatory.

TAS iATE regional meeting

On Wednesday, 29 May, a group of TAS teachers met at AHS for the annual term ITE

meeting. This meeting is conducted once a term and travels to different schools in the

Far North Coast. Mr Naughton has been the chair and coordinator of the group since

it was established five years ago. Teachers meet regularly to keep up to date with

changes to the syllabus’s new courses on offer and to generally share ideas and

showcase what is happening at each school. This is a great opportunity for teachers to

network and set up collaboration between schools and actually model what we teach

in the classroom.

Skateboards

From the above network, a group of students have been building skateboards at lunchtime with Mr Naughton and have been able

to work collaboratively with Mr Wright at Lindisfarne Anglican School to access their laser cutter to produce some amazing and

very intricate works of design for their skateboards. Students are hopeful we can get a laser cutter here so the work can be done

in house and students at AHS learn the skills required to use a laser cutter. This would give them a greater set of ‘job ready’ skills.


Wood show Challenge

Last week Mr Naughton travelled to Sydney to run the annual state

finals of the Wood show Challenge. This is an annual event traditionally

run at the Timber and Working with Wood Show and Mr Naughton is

the state coordinator of this challenge. Throughout the year, it is run in

schools or at local regional events and then the regional winners are

sent to Sydney for the state finals. School from as far as Broken Hill in

the west to Murwillumbah in the North and Gundagai in the South have

competed in this Challenge. Would you like to help Mr Naughton run

this challenge at a local event in Alstonville, or would you like to be a

part of this year’s local regional challenge? Make contact with Mrs

Christmas Head Teacher of TAS.

Vanessa Christmas/Relieving Head Teacher TAS

Environmental News:

We would like to highlight the need

for our school community to recycle

our plastic bottles. Our

environmental group this week has

commenced a recycling of the 10c

bottles and we wish for you to

encourage all students to recycle their plastic bottles in our

new yellow bins.

Most beverage containers are eligible for a 10c refund

provided they are made from glass, plastic, aluminum, steel

or liquid paperboard. Containers should be empty,

uncrushed, unbroken, and have the original label intact.

Vanessa Christmas / Relieving Head Teacher TAS

Term 2 Homework Centre ONLY

When: Every Monday

Time: 3.20pm to 5.00pm

Where: AHS Library

Come along and bring your latest

homework and assignment tasks.

We provide fresh fruit and biscuits.

https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiy6u6Tif_bAhXGj5QKHW-zCOIQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FNSWGovCDS%2Fposts%2F1539133819502887&psig=AOvVaw3cy1aV_PhnTLJqyA7gZmIY&ust=1530574583202746

Alstonville High School Newsletter · 6/19/2019 · following activities: oomerangles [, Weaving,...

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