Year 6 Canberra Excursion

NEWSLETTER

Academic • Christian • Caring

Headmaster’s Message

Chaplain’s Message

Head of Senior School

Head of Junior School

Issue 2 Term III, 2012

Kindergarten Reading

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The Important Things In Life “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games

There is something very alluring about a league table. There is no better example than the Olympic Games where the ideals that established the modern Olympic movement in 1894 have somehow become lost, particularly in the media, with the obsession for Gold Medals and being the ‘top’ nation (I can still remember ABC Commentator Norman May’s famous “Gold, Gold to Australia, Gold” call of the 1980 4x100m Men’s Medley Relay). I fear that the wonderful performances of all the athletes, whether they win a medal or not, may be diminished if the media has as its focus the number of Gold Medals won during these games compared to other games. I have already heard one reporter ask a swimmer with expectations of winning a gold medal if they were “gutted” at coming fourth in an Olympic final!

The same is true for our HSC students. An ATAR is a measure used by universities to rank students for the purpose of allocating limited places in courses. The process used by the universities involves taking HSC results from the NSW Board of Studies and scaling those results in a way that reflects the preferences of the universities. An ATAR is a measure of the academic performance of a student, not the only measure.

Is a student that receives an ATAR of 99.55 better than a student that receives an ATAR of 95.10? Should a student receiving an ATAR of 89.95 feel disappointed and the student that achieved 72.75 hang their head in shame? Is it best not to even talk about an ATAR in the 60s?

One dimensional measures like ATAR that rank students and then invite a judgement about the student and their performance should be used with caution. They should never be used in isolation and they should never solely be used to pass judgement on a student or a school. An ATAR of 95.10 can mask serious underachievement, a lack of social skills and a disengagement from society by the student while an ATAR of 89.95 can mask achievement beyond what was expected by the student and give no indication at all of the level of contribution the student has made through service, performance and engagement to the community.

It is interesting to note that the universities themselves have recognised the shortcomings of using ATAR to rank students and then allocate them to courses. Interviews, portfolios and supplementary testing are regularly used by universities in addition to ATAR and students are expected to demonstrate that they can support academic ability with other qualities such as strength of character, perseverance and a heart for the community. The School encourages students to be involved in a broad range of experiences and co-curricular activities and this is a significant reason why 65% of Year 12 graduates in 2011 from TIGS were offered a place at university before they sat for their HSC examinations.

A similar narrow measure of student performance is the ranking of Year 12 cohorts by newspapers based on the only information released by the Board of Studies: the percentage of students that achieve the top band in HSC subjects. This crude measure is used by the media to rank all schools, regardless of whether they are ‘selective’ or have an ‘open’ enrolment (like TIGS). Not surprisingly, the top ranked schools are the selective schools. TIGS ranking has varied each year depending on the variable academic ability of each cohort. In recent years TIGS has been ranked as high as 67 in the state. Was this our ‘best year’? Was the cohort that did not make the ‘top 100’ a failure?

The power of a league table to tempt us to make poorly informed value judgements about students and schools is something to guard against. As an exercise, the School examined the 2011 HSC results for TIGS students of similar academic ability to those in selective schools which typically have students in the top 5% of academic ability. The results of the top 10% of TIGS students would have ranked TIGS 3rd in the state behind James Ruse and North Sydney Boys High. The performance of our top 20% of candidates would still have ranked TIGS 12th in the state, ahead of Sydney Grammar.

Our focus at TIGS is on good teaching and learning and not narrow measures of performance and misleading league tables. We strive to enable each of our students to be “the best they can be” across the whole spectrum of life experiences, including but not limited to academic performance.

We enjoy knowing that our students rank well against other students and other schools but there is greater satisfaction in knowing that 87% of our students, benefiting from the TIGS approach to education, were offered entry into the university course of their choice, 65% of them before they even sat for their HSC examinations.

We wish Year 12, 2012 success in their Trial HSC Examinations, happiness in their final Term of schooling, and confidence knowing that their school experience at TIGS was more than a university ranking exercise.

Stephen KinsellaHeadmaster

Stephen Kinsella Headmaster

Chaplain’s Message Watch Your Language! I have noticed a trend in our language of late. The trend is to preface something we are about to say with the words, ‘To be honest...’. Sometimes when we really want to drive home the point we will say, ‘To be perfectly honest…’.

At one level, this is just a harmless habit of speech which aims to stress the importance of what is being said. At another level, however, this turn of phrase carelessly implies that it is not always our practice to speak the truth. To preface our statements in this way is to effectively say that while we cannot always be relied upon to speak the truth, in this present case, we give our word that we are speaking the truth. This is careless to say the least.

As Christians we are to be truth tellers all the time. God is a truth teller and he expects those who are being recreated anew in Christ to bear the family resemblance. In the New Testament Epistle of James we learn that God chose to give us birth through the word of truth so that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created (James 1.18). We bear testimony to that as we speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4.15). Every time we speak it ought to be like we are depositing words into people’s trust accounts. Our aim is to give people confidence that whenever we speak we are telling the truth. We want them to be able to act upon our words with confidence. That is how it is with God and that is how it ought to be with us as well.

Like I said, I appreciate that much of the time this way of speaking is just a bad verbal habit. But, even so, Christians should care enough about words to avoid falling into bad verbal habits. Words matter to God; he created and upholds the world by his powerful word (Hebrews 1.3; 11.3). Words, therefore, ought to matter to us.

Jesus put it this way in the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5.37)

Rev James RogersChaplain

Senior School Community ServiceIt’s so inspiring to see our students reaching out to engage with the wider community, to be caring of others and actively involved in improving the knowledge and skills of those in their local community, supporting our alliance with an indigenous community and developing our links with international communities. This week has seen students passionate about helping others and those with a passion for community engagement beyond the School walls being active in their endeavours.

This week at Assembly we welcomed students from Shonan Koka Daigaku Fuzoku High School in Japan to our School. These students are spending seven days in our school and living with some of our school families. They will have intensive English lessons and spend some time in Year 10 classes. Year 10 students told us about their Community Service Trip to The Crossroads Foundation in Hong Kong. Find out more at www.crossroads.org.hk

Year 12 raised funds and awareness for the work they do with the Disability Trust with a ‘Servant Auction.’ Years 7 and 8 became very animated and involved in bidding for their teachers for reasons that might become obvious to us all later!

Year 11 students made a presentation about their recent trip to the remote community of Nganambala (Emu Point) in the Northern Territory. This visit will be reciprocated later in the year when we will host a group of students from the Primary School. Thus we will continue to develop mutual respect, knowledge and understanding of each other’s culture and forge strong links for the future.

Also this week two Community Problem solving teams demonstrated their passion and commitment to caring for and supporting the wider community. The first group, Hannah Kim, Maria Kyriakoudes, Namika Parjuli and Quynh-Hju Nguyen, won a Wollongong University Healthy Schools Competition and will receive funding to carry out a campaign called HEALTH; Healthy Eating Adds Life to Humans. The second group from Year 10 spearheaded by Inez Playford and Piper Stewart, fresh from being placed 3rd in the International Community Problem Solving Competition in the US this year, are now planning to take their anti-bullying message to the wider community. Piper and Inez have now enlisted the help of Travys Carinci and Sarah Long and calling themselves The Kids Count Team have planned to hold an Ambassadors Day here at TIGS where student representatives from local primary schools will learn about combating bullying, leadership skills and other ways to help their peers. Thus empowered and up-skilled they will be powerful forces for good within their school. What a fabulous initiative. Well done!

We are so proud of all of these great students and the leadership they are showing.

Monica WattDeputy Headmaster and Head of Senior School

Rev James RogersChaplain

Monica WattDeputy Headmaster and Head of Senior School

Junior School Attitudes To Aspire ToWe are now quite well acquainted with the Learner Profile attributes in the Junior School. The children use the language of the Learner Profile in their classrooms and on the playground, they value behaviour that demonstrates these qualities and we can observe the impact of this framework in their learning. The timing is right for us to now refocus on the Attitudes.

As adults we all know that the attitudes we take to a particular task have an enormous impact on the success of that task. The IB has identified a set of 12 attitudes that are embedded in our teaching and learning opportunities and also explicitly taught to our children in the Junior School. The positive development of these attitudes will have a profound effect on the way our children learn, play together, behave in the family home and indeed in the community. It is our intention to promote these attitudes amongst all members of our Junior School community, parents, students, ancillary staff, teachers, tutors, everyone.

The timing is right to now corporately look at the PYP attitudes; these are descriptors of how we want our community to approach each other, our world and ourselves. They are outward looking and sit beautifully with our Christian mandate of service and stewardship.

This term we will look at the attitudes as a community, culminating in our Big Day in where we will celebrate the development of these attitudes at our School and in our community. Remember that children strive to “do” what their significant adults value. If we are able to show the children that we value the outworking of these values at home, at school and in other areas of their lives, then our children will learn to value them also. Why don’t you put these attitudes on your fridge, talk about what they look like as they are being lived and watch your children grow and develop into global citizens as they take on these attitudes.

I must apologise to our Cooinda children for neglecting to put their term outline into last week’s newsletter.

This term as part of the transdisciplinary theme “How We Express Ourselves” Cooinda will investigate how ‘Through play we can make meaning of the world’.

Provocations as well as our rich classroom environment will encourage the children to learn through play. The children will take a learning journey by looking at how toys, our environment around us and our feelings can help us to make meaning of the world.

Over the coming weeks the Olympics will feature as a way in which we can show the children how people from all different countries come together to make new friendships, take risks and understand fairness.

Judi NealyHead of Junior School

Weekly AwardsKB Nicole Mau, Ethan Bywater

KD Thomas Saffoury, Luke Jansen

KM Ali Matar, Ella McIlwaraith

1C Sarah Partland, Grace Hilton

2P Jordan McRae

3M Alexis Belsito, Oscar Tilden, Ella Vartazarian, Charlotte Tregonning, Amy Lendrum, Sarah Hutchinson, Jessica Hall, Alexandria Gunther, Olivia Barber

3Y James Kirby

4R Cartia Taranto

5N Sarah Jansen, Breanna Saad

5S Michael Kyriakoudes, Lana Atkinson, Maryam Simon

6T Tayla Smith, Victor Obinanor

6W Aaron Doherty, Jonty Swainson, Lachlan Phillpott

Merit CertificatesSophie McGuire – ServiceMaximilian Sanzone – Personal PresentationSarah Jansen – AcademicHarrison Kiteley – AcademicOlivia Barber – Academic

IB AttItuDES

AppreciationCommitmentConfidenceCooperation

CreativityCuriosityEmpathy

EnthusiasmIndependence

IntegrityRespect

Tolerance

Chess Wrap upThe NSW Junior Interschool Chess Competition 2012 has now concluded. TIGS entered four teams of boys and girls in Years 3-6 and we played at home and at various schools in the Illawarra.

Our Championship team, captained by Daniel Dragutinovich with Anish Abey, Jermaine Issa and Vincent Qiang, is in a building phase and finished the rounds creditably with a 2-2 draw against St Michaels. During the season the School received email notification from an opposition school about the way Daniel conducted himself and supported the team and as this is Daniel’s last year in the Junior Competition I would like to commend him for his commitment to sportsmanship and fair play.

Our Rookies teams had mixed success and a lot of fun! TIGS “B” team of Nathan Bridge (Captain), Josh Agarwal, Francis Mau and Bodie Hemsley-Oades placed third with 23 points. The TIGS “C” team, captained by Krish Gupta supported by Xia Lian Wilson, Molly Parrish and Sufyann Al-Huq all learnt how to win across the season and our TIGS “D” team of Maya Middleton (Captain), Chad Jenkins, Rayyan Saqib and Ajay Rindanni finished a creditable 4th with 19 points.

Special mention must go to the Canteen which provides such sought after refreshments; thank you Meg.

The next chess competition will be on 19 September in Rees Hall when TIGS hosts the One-Day Chess Tournament. Unfortunately it clashes with the Stage 3 Camp but that will allow stronger participation from Years 3 and 4 students. I will call for nominations closer to that date.

Finally, thank you to those parents who assisted with safe and reliable transportation; without your efforts, our participation would not be possible.

Junior School Sport

‘THE WORKS’ EXHIBITION 2012Invitation

An inspiring exhibition of the collaboration and artistic endeavours of our HSC students, current and past teachers, students, parents and friends of TIGS.

A major fundraiser for TIGS Foundation Scholarships.

Friday 24 August 20126.00pm - 7.00pm The Works 2012 VIP Preview7.00pm - 9.00pm Official Opening

Saturday 25 August 201210.00am - 4.00pm

Monday 6 AugustHELP NEEDED

tuesday 7 AugustAnne Jones

Wednesday 8 AugustHeather RuggNicole AnastasPam Parkinson

thursday 9 AugustVanessa CrossAssunta Disibio

Friday 3 August Lauretta Bussoletti

Canteen Newsthank youThank you to all the families that have joined Flexi Schools. This is a wonderful system for both families and the Canteen, if you have not already joined please go to www.flexischools.com.au and have a look.

Student Success:Hockey – Congratulations to Tegan Richards (Year 12) who recently represented NSW in the Under 21 Australian Hockey Championships in Adelaide. Tegan played a pivotal role in the NSW Australian Championship win and has now been selected in the Australian Futures Hockey squad. It is the first time in ten years since NSW won this event.

Volleyball – Congratulations to Kieran Ackhurst (Year 10) who recently represented NSW in the Australian under 17 Volleyball Championships. He played outside hitter and universal for most of the games. After many years the NSW Team was victorious in winning the Australian Championships. Well done Kieran.

Bill turner Cup The U/15 boys Bill Turner Cup players came together on Thursday 26 for the final of the South Coast division. Under our captain Lachlan Scott, our boys took on Holy Spirit and got off to a great start. Two early goals from Zac McLaren and Joel Moore put us in a strong position. However it was to be short lived and by half time it was 2 all. The boys gave it their best but it just wasn’t our day. Both Harrison Taranto and Matthew Galanti hit the woodwork and other golden opportunities were missed. Our backs, Thomas Goodhew, Tomas Saponja, Peter Kyriakoudes, Lachlan Scott and Cameron Barrett with keeper Jonathon Kollaras did well but Holy Spirit ended up winning 4-2 and will now travel throughout NSW as the South Coast winner. Congratulations to all our boys who have shown good sportsmanship, teamwork and a fighting spirit throughout this tournament.

NASSA Netball Gala DayOn Friday 27 July, the TIGS Junior, Intermediate and Senior Netball Teams participated in the NASSA Netball Gala day at Kirkham Park, Camden.

The results were as follows:

TIGS Junior Netball Team (Year 7)

The Junior team had a very successful day with only one loss to Penrith Anglican College to finish in second place overall.

TIGS Intermediate Netball Team (Year 8 and 9)

The Intermediate team came up against some tough and physically dominant competition throughout the day which made it very difficult to secure a win. They finished sixth place overall.

TIGS Open Netball Team (Year 10, 11 and 12)

The Senior team had a number of close games, winning 50% of their halves but were unable to provide the consistency needed to produce a win. They finished sixth place overall.

Congratulations to all team members who represented TIGS with fairness and good spirit.

Illawarra District Netball Association Carnival Day

Last Sunday four TIGS Netball Teams played in the IDNA Carnival at Fred Finch Park, Berkeley. The teams included Under 8’s, Under 10’s, Under 11’s and Under 15’s. All of the teams played with great spirits as they were challenged by teams from Sydney, Canberra and the Illawarra. The teams

played a minimum of seven games during the day which tested their fitness and team work.Congratulations to the under 10 TIGS Pearls Team who were determined and focussed to win the competition day undefeated. Congratulations to these girls Cartia Taranto, Annabel Malouf, Toria Tsakaridis, Annie McLearie, Mila Lancaster, Aanya Rakheija, Sarah Van Vreumingen, and Selene Chadrawy. Coach: Fifi Chadrawy Manager: Vanessa Taranto

Thank you to the coaches and managers of all teams for giving up their weekend time to support the TIGS Netball Club.

AICES RugbyOn Wednesday July 25, 24 committed rugby enthusiasts travelled to Granville Park in Parramatta to compete in the inaugural under 15’s and open AICES rugby gala day.

The opens team had three games during the day narrowly losing each one. Xavier Whitton scored a try in two of the three games with Robert Gyngell and Damien Galanti also claiming tries throughout the day. The team was led well by Jake O’Connor.

The Under 15’s played four games winning three and loosing one, finishing them 2nd on the table. Isaac Brown, Simon Mill and Mitchell Ferguson were amongst the best players of the day. Try Scorers for TIGS were Bailey White, Bryce Prior, Simon Mill, Thomas Chadrawy, Mannar Jasim and Cameron Barrett.

Congratulations to the following boys on their sportsmanship and commitment.

Opens

Lachlan Prior, Andrew Barker, James Belcher, Xavier Whitton, Andre Hollis, Kuiam Anu, Lachlan Hubble, Jake O’Connor, Oliver Sinclair, Ken Issa, Damien Galanti, Robert Gyngell and Thomas Dougall

Under 15’s

Mannar Jasim, Bryce Prior,

Sameer Mohamed, Jacob Shalala, Beppe Fieravanti, Simon Mill, Isaac Brown, Mitchell Ferguson, Dylan Lees, Baily White, Angus Pryde, Louis Parsons-O’Malley, Cameron Barrett and Thomas Chadrawy.

CIS Cup Football – Round 3 TIGS vs Newington College

On Tuesday 31 July, the TIGS Open Boys Football team travelled to Newington College to compete against them in Round 3 of the Open Boys CIS Football Cup. With a number of players out due to injury and School commitments, TIGS went into the game slightly understrength and clear underdogs against a formidable Newington side.

TIGS dominated early in the match but were unable to capitalise on a number of opportunities. Newington scored after about 15 minutes, against the run of play, and then again soon after from a free kick, 2-0 to Newington.

At about the 20 minute mark, TIGS had one of their key defenders sent off after receiving two yellow cards. The TIGS players never gave up, however and even dominated some patches of the match, creating a number of goal scoring opportunities. The score remained at 2-0 until about the last 10 minutes of the match, as TIGS threw more players forward in an attempt to level the scores, Newington capitalised on an understrength defence to score 3 quick goals to put the game out of reach. The final score being 5-0 to Newington.

Well done to the TIGS team who, even when the odds were stacked against them, never gave up and displayed great character.

Senior School Sport

• HSCDramaEvening

Monday 6 August 2012

• PupilFreeDay/Profe

ssionalLearningDay

Monday 20 August 2012

• NASSASeniorSchoolAt

hleticsCarnival

Wednesday 22 August 2012

• TheWorks2012

7.00pm Friday 24 August 2012 - Official Opening

10.00am - 4.00pm Saturday 25 August 2012

• HICESGiftedandTa

lentedCamp

Monday 27 August 2012 - Friday 31 August 2012

• HSCMusic2Concert

Monday 27 August 2012

• Prep2DayandStag

e3FathersDayStall

• Years10and11Dr

amaEvening

Tuesday 28 August 2012