Blackburn High School 15 August 2017

ISSUE NINE

In this issue:

Principal’s Report

Dunlop House

Freeman House

Hollows House

Melba House

Year 7 Rich Tasks

EAL Support

Languages

The Arts

PE and Health

Literacy

International Students

Other News

Whole School Assembly, 10 August 2017

Principal’s Report Whole School Assembly

At the whole school assembly conducted on Thursday 10 August, it was my privilege to formally introduce the new Blackburn High School Values that will be used as a reference point for all members of the school community.

These new school values were developed following an extensive school review process last year:

Respect

Of oneself, others and of learning, are displayed through honesty, integrity, consideration and the celebration of diversity in a safe and inclusive environment.

Pursuit of Excellence

Students are supported to reach their full potential by developing wide-ranging skills and capabilities and to show growth academically, personally and socially. We value and celebrate effort and achievement.

Citizenship

Students are encouraged to become active and informed citizens through their participation at a local, national and global level. This is demonstrated through involvement in the rich opportunities within the school and wider communities. Students are supported to take increasing responsibility for their own learning, their relationships with others and their participation in all aspects of their school life.

Pathways and Transition Program.

On Wednesday 19th July, from 4:30pm-5:30pm the school hosted the very popular 2017 Subject Expo in the Resource Centre. Students and their parents were provided with an opportunity to discuss a range of issues with the Learning Area Leaders and other staff.

The Subject Expo was followed by the very well attended VCE, Year 10 and Year 9 Pathways Information sessions in the gymnasium. Congratulations to the Ms Arlene Roberts, Ms Caroline Gachon, Ms Shona McEnaney, Mr David Greenwell and Mr Terry McGann who provided informative presentations to the students and their parents.

On Wednesday 26 July during periods 3 and 4, all Year 10 students and their parents were invited to attend one to one pathways counselling sessions where they had an opportunity to discuss a range of pathways options with a dedicated staff counsellor.

Intercultural Tour to London and Paris

Congratulations and thank you to Ms Nicole Taylor, Mr Geoff Vezey and Mr Adrian Ferres who attended the Intercultural Tour to London and Paris from 23 June-10 July with 28 students from Years 9-12. There has been a lot of positive feedback about the tour from both parents and students who have stated that the tour was a great success and a life changing learning experience for some students.

Principal’s Report Music Acknowledgements

Well done to the Flute Ensemble that mesmerised the audience at Government House a few weeks ago. The students were: Naomi Bruhn, Cassie Pennings, Caitlin Hurly, Shanice Weatherley, and thank you to their teacher Ms Jemima Bunn.

Congratulations the students and teachers who participated in the Victorian Schools Music Festival last week. All the best to Ms Maryanne Rigby-Black and the students in the choir who will be competing this week.

On the last day of Term Two, six of our students performed at the Kerrimuir Primary School Harry Potter Festival where the students competed in the Quidditch tournament. Zach Burnet, Tabitha Rushby, Cooper Socharky, Oscar Valle, Lily Williams-Zangmeister and Grayson Zaidel performed magnificently throughout the tournament and the parents, students and staff were very appreciative. Thank you to Ms Sue Wedding for organising the music, and also to Ms Jane Richards.

Indigenous and Vegetable Gardens

During this term three teachers, Mr Greg Hlasko, Ms Kate Chislett and Mr Matthew Wirth, will be working with their classes to construct indigenous gardens around the school as part of their Humanities and Science programs. The indigenous plants will be identified for their medicinal, food and construction qualities.

I would like to acknowledge Mr Bruce Wolstenholme who has worked tirelessly over the term break to set up the garden beds for the indigenous gardens, and to organise the fencing and labelling of the plants.

School Clubs

A large number of our teachers have volunteered their time to support students follow their interests by supervising the plethora of Lunchtime Clubs that include: Maths, Cheerleading, Now Mustard Group, LGBTIQ, Zumba, Fitness & Gym, Chemistry, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Breakfast, Chess, Badminton, Debating, Knitty Gritty, Love2read, History, Movie and Girls Self Defense.

Royal Australian Chemical Institute Titrations Competitions

Congratulations to one of our student science teams that participated in the prestigious titration competition. The team of Mathew Zukiewicz, Lucas Pamminger and Damon Ashby, who came 35th overall have been invited to the Victorian Branch Titration competition.

Joanna Alexander, Principal

Dunlop House

Welcome Romy Bristow

This term we warmly welcome our new House

Administrative Assistant, Romy Bristow. Romy is

replacing Liga Darzins, who is now the Resource Centre

Manager. Romy will be the first point of contact at the

Dunlop House Office and can be contacted either by

telephone (8804 6410) or email on

bristow.romy.a@edumail.vic.gov.au regarding general

school or House enquires, as well as for notification of

Dunlop student absences.

Weary Dunlop Commemorative Service

The date 12 July marks a day of significance in the

Dunlop House calendar, as it is the day in which Sir

Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop was born. It is also the day

each year that members of the Dunlop Foundation

gather at Weary’s statue on St Kilda Road in

Melbourne to commemorate the many great deeds of

service that Weary performed and to continue his

legacy with the launch the annual Fundraising Appeal.

This year’s service was attended by mentor leaders

Ryan Hewitt, Gemma Hooper and Annabelle Nye, and

staff Claire Greve and Jacinta Marcus.

We would like to make special mention of the

outstanding commitment of Gemma Hooper. Gemma

has been a Mentor Leader for the past six years of

school and has given up time during the school

holiday break to attend each Annual service.

Dunlop STARS!

We have had many students recognised in the last month for numerous awards. Congratulations to the following students: Tom Gilbert for receiving the Monash Scholarship Award. Year 7 Rich Task awards: Ryan Holmes for Best in Show, and Dominic White for Best ‘X-Factor’ Hand Made item. Lara Schneider, who is currently on a music scholarship at Berkley University in the United States. Angus Devereux for his achievement in representing the school at the State Cross Country and placing in the finals. Matthew Zukiewicz, Damon Ashby and Lucas Pamminger for placing 35th at the 2017 RACI Victorian Branch Titration competition.

Dunlop House

Dunlop Fundraiser

On Friday, 11 August, Dunlop House held its annual fundraiser for the Weary Dunlop Foundation. As a Prisoner of War himself, Sir Edward Dunlop was very well aware of the impact of war service on Veterans and their families. He strongly believed that this warranted greater attention and, typically, resolved to do something about it. In 1985 his drive led to the creation of the Sir Edward Dunlop Medical Research Foundation, now known as the Weary Dunlop Foundation, to encourage emerging medical researchers to study the health conditions of Veterans, serving personnel, and their families. The health and well-being of those who have served and sacrificed remains vitally important today, and the Weary Dunlop Foundation continues to pursue the vision inherited from this truly great Australian. The Dunlop fundraiser was organised by the Dunlop Student Leadership team, who were supported by House Leader Claire Greve and Assistant House Leader Jacinta Marcus. The student leaders chose to hold a sausage sizzle with drinks as well as sweet and salty popcorn. The students handled themselves amazingly in the face of large queues and sold over 600 sausages. The mentorship from older leaders to younger leaders was also great to see. Students in all Houses were encouraged to wear as much red as possible to show support for the Weary Dunlop Foundation. It was wonderful to see staff and students alike decked out in red- lips, nails, shoes, socks, ribbons and more were on display! Overall, including the donations for free dress, we raised $2785.00 for the Weary Dunlop Foundation. A big thank you to the Dunlop Student Leadership team, as well as the Dunlop staff for their support on the day. A special mention must also go to Laura Burns and Sam Clifton for opening up the Food Tech room to us.

Claire Greve, House Leader and Jacinta Marcus, Assistant House Leader

Freeman House School Sport Victoria Eastern Region and State Diving Finals

Congratulations to the following Freeman students who represented Blackburn High School in the Eastern Metropolitan Region and State Finals, for the sport of Diving, which were held at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre.

William Whitehead (Year 12) - Finished in 2nd Place for EMR and 2nd Place in the State Final. Kynan Whitehead (Year 10) - Finished in 1st Place for EMR and 2nd Place in the State Final. Molly Roche (Year 9) - Finished in 3rd Place for EMR and 5th Place in the State Final.

William and Kynan have qualified to represent School Sport Victoria as members of the TeamVic diving team at the Pacific School Games which will be held in Adelaide in December.

Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award

Congratulations to Bethanie Grey (Year 9) who is the first Freeman student to achieve her Bronze Duke of Edinburgh award. This is a fantastic achievement and reward for 6 months of commitment to meet the requirements of the award which involves learning a new skill, volunteering in the community, participating in physical recreation and completing an adventurous journey.

The activities Bethanie undertook as part of her award included playing basketball, coaching junior teams, learning and improving vocational skills in a clinical setting and hiking through the snow for two days at Falls Creek. We look forward to celebrating other Freeman students finishing their award in the near future.

Youth Archery Championships

Tian Mortimer (Year 7) competed in the National Archery Indoor Championships and the Victorian Archery Indoor Championships in July. In the State Championships, she won one gold and three silver individual medals, as well as one gold as a member of the Victorian team. This meant that she had achieved her goal for this year to be chosen as a state representative.

Her next goal is to represent Australia, hopefully at the Trans Tasman competition next year, and the State team again next year for the National Youth Archery Championships.

Congratulations Tian on your wonderful results and achieving your goals – we wish you all the best in the pursuit of your further goals. (I think we need to put archery into the School Athletics Sports for 2018!)

Sharon Gardner-Drummond, House Leader

Year 7 Rich Task In the first week of third term, all of the Year 7 girls and boys got to choose a topic for their rich task; there were hundreds of topics to choose from, ranging from Monopoly to finger painting. We had a week to research our topic and find out as much as we could about it. I chose the topic of the Greenhouse Effect, and I learnt a great deal about how big an issue it is for the environment. Over the course of the week, we researched and planned our chosen topic. We prepared four different text types to display. At the start of the week I created a plan of how I was going to divide the week up, to make sure I was able to finish everything on time. As I discovered, what I thought was a great plan on Monday didn’t quite transpire as I had hoped. Our first interactive session was an oral presentation on Thursday to discuss our chosen topics. Peers then had the opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions. We had the rest of the day to work on the remaining text types. By Friday, everyone had finished and we all displayed our work; we were then assessed by a teacher and a peer. After the final touches were complete, family and friends started arriving to view the displays. Students presented and talked about their topic to visitors, many visitors wrote fantastic comments about the students’ work. They then had an opportunity to vote for their favourite displays. Although there were times when I thought I would never get everything finished it all thankfully worked out in the end. My favourite part personally was creating a poster and the model – it made me realise how much I had learnt and could achieve in such a short period of time. It was such a fun week learning new information and being able to put it on display. Georgina Shand, 7FA

Freeman House

Hollows House

$3900 to Fred Hollows Foundation

Hollows house were extremely proud on Monday to donate

$3900 to the Fred Hollows Foundation. This was money that was

raised earlier in the year from our free dress day, bake sale and

Mother’s Day stall.

We were visited at our assembly by Jane Crouch who is the

Melbourne ambassador for the Fred Hollows Foundation. Jane

told our students of the difference a sum of money like this can

make to the life of so many people suffering from cataract

blindness.

Thanks again to the whole school community for helping us raise

this money.

Mark Pasquali, House Leader

Hollows House

CONGRATULATIONS YEAR 7’S

A big congratulations to all of our year 7’s who participated in the Rich Task program. There were a lot of

discoveries and inventions looked at and some great displays made, as shown below.

Melba House

Melba House celebrations

Year 7 Rich Task

The 2017 Rich Task was a chance for Year 7 students to research an innovation, invention or discovery of their choice, in depth, over the course of a week. This interdisciplinary approach to learning culminated in the student displays which celebrated their hard work and newfound knowledge. Displays were visited by fellow students, local primary schools and proud family members. Ryan Holmes won Best in Show, Joel Heeraman won Best Presenter and Dominic White won the X Factor vote. Congratulations to all the Year 7s for their hard work!

Ms Caroline Gachon

Last term in EAL Support, Year 7 students took part in an

instructional learning unit, which involved hands-on

activities and kinaesthetic learning.

Students enjoyed engaging activities, such as independently

following a set of instructions to make a 3D origami crane,

using their geospatial skills to navigate a map and

undertaking role-play recipe presentations to develop their

instructional writing and speaking skills.

At the end of the term, students presented their own

instructional model on a skill or activity they excelled in.

Special thanks to multi-cultural aide, Yuqian He for her

assistance with the International students.

Rebecca Bianco EAL Co-ordinator

EAL Support

Soirée Trivia Year 9 & 10 A dozen Year 9 & 10 students represented Blackburn High School at the annual French Trivia Night run by the Association of French Teachers in Victoria. These events are designed for students who are looking for enrichment and the chance to practice their French outside of school. Students participated in a number of trivia rounds on topics such as history, geography, language and la gastronomie (all in French, bien-sûr!) In between the rounds of questions were the novelty events, including the ever-popular ‘blind macaron tasting’. It was great to see Blackburn High School students taking the lead at their tables, volunteering to do some of the more intimidating challenges and participating fully and positively in all aspects of the event. Félicitations to the following students on their involvement and for being wonderful ambassadors of the school: Year 9: Katie Young, Meg Wills, Andre Heeraman, Dainika Morgan, Anthony Waymouth; Year 10: Joshua Yong, Emily Rushby, Georgia Crowley, Tara Knoll, Ellen Tobin-Spall, Emily Varcoe, Luke Seymour. A special thank you to Madame Pochinco who volunteered on the organising committee of the event! We encourage current Year 8 & 9 French students to sign up in 2018!

Ms Emma Dickson and Ms Aimée Pochinco

The Arts Languages

The Arts

GERTRUDE STREET PROJECTION FESTIVAL Students from Blackburn High School were selected to screen their video works at the Gertrude Street Projection Festival for the Artbox Video Jam for emerging video artists. The students Meghan Fiddler, Skye Cody and Stella Cianchi were celebrated and supported at the event by fellow Blackburn students, parents and Ms Carter. This is an incredible achievement by very talented artists.

Ms Tameka Carter

Skye Cody—Power and Elegance

Stella Cianchi— Shape Faces

CrossFit

For the past couple of months Mr Cairns has been

running fitness sessions in the gym before school

Monday to Friday. These fitness sessions are all based

around CrossFit. What is CrossFit? Well, CrossFit is a

sport which is becoming more and more popular each

year around the world. In fact, the CrossFit Games which

take place once a year in the USA were held last

weekend. There is an individual competition for men and

women. The winner of this competition is crowned 'The

Fittest Man/Woman on Earth' and the 2017 Woman's

Champion and Runner up were both Australian!

Students are arriving as early as 7am to begin their

CrossFit workouts with Mr Cairns. He encourages

students to arrive at the gym any time between 7am and

7:50am as he begins packing up at 8:25am for students

to be on time for mentor group. Who can attend these

workouts? ANY student in ANY year level with a positive

attitude towards learning new things and working hard.

Mr Cairns is very passionate about fitness and enjoys

working with students who have no experience with

fitness/sport, and also those who play sport and are

active outside of school. All workouts can be altered to

meet the needs of any student so everyone who comes

along is challenged.

CrossFit is competitive as athletes compete against other

athletes to either complete a workout in the quickest

time, or with the most repetitions in a set time. What Mr

Cairns has been most impressed with is the healthy

competition between students at Blackburn. Students

are encouraging their peers to do the best they can and

achieve scores and times they didn't think they were

capable of. Other students are more focused on self

improvement and their goal is to improve from week to

week on their own scores.

PE and Health

NEW HOUSE LIBRARY BOOK COLLECTIONS

A joint initiative between the English Department

and the Resource Centre.

Inspired by the English Department, who were seeking ways to

increase reading levels among our students, the school has

purchased over 200 beautiful new books, both fiction and non-

fiction, to temp the students. Topics take in all the areas of the

curriculum—Art, Sciences, History, Geography, Music, Sport —as well

as the latest and most popular fiction works. These books are

displayed in purpose built shelving in each of the Houses, as well as

in a special section of the Resource Centre.

Students are encouraged to browse these books, borrow and read

them. With such a broad range of topics, there is bound to be

something for everyone.

Students wishing to borrow a book from the House cabinets should

speak to Mr Ayre in Freeman, or to Liga in the Resource Centre, to

arrange the loan.

Happy reading!

Literacy

International Students

Live below the line

During the last week of May seven students successfully completed the Live Below the Line Challenge. Over five days, these pupils lived on $2 per day, just like millions of people all over the world who struggle with living below this poverty line. These seven students; Jason Kelly, Daiety Richards-Thacker, Alex Proctor, Mandy Wong, Kaja Jeffery, Sevda Chalani, and myself raised an astounding $645.96 with Alex Proctor raising an amazing $228.68 alone!! Well done to everyone! From 11- 13 August, members or our group participated the 40 Hour Famine event, committing to living out of a backpack for 40 hours to raise funds for refugee and displaced children.

Caitlin Hurly, Social Justice Captain

Other News

Macbeth – the damaging physical and psychological effects on those who seek power for its own sake. Macbeth is a tragedy by William Shakespeare; it is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake and still has relevance in today’s political world. The Complete Works Theatre Company visited Blackburn High School to perform Macbeth – the play they are studying. The performers faithfully represented the play with an abridged version full of jealousy, sword fighting, rapid costume changes and, of course, nasty witches. Seeing the play performed gave students insight in to understanding Shakespeare’s lines, stage directions and characters – all important for their written analysis of the play.

The Breakfast Club

Research shows breakfast is an important meal of the day for students. It assists students’ physical, mental and emotional development so they can concentrate for longer and are less easily distracted. It is estimated that 40% of students in Australia skip having breakfast. However, at Blackburn High School students can be part of the Breakfast Club which meets weekly on Thursdays to start the day with a free, tasty, nutritious breakfast in the company of their fellow students and staff.

It is a wonderful way to enjoy a fun, communal, happy start to the day.

The Breakfast Club is supported by IGA and Bakers Delight from Blackburn North Shopping Centre. The students and staff at Blackburn High School sincerely appreciate the generous and civic minded contributions from these businesses to our school community.

This is an excellent example of a productive collaboration between the business community and the school working together in the best interests of the healthy development of our students.

Students Meet the Author of the Book They are Studying

Year 8 students were given the wonderful opportunity to talk to Robert Newton, the author of the book they are currently studying. His book Runner is set in Richmond 1919 and tells the struggles of young Charlie Feehan as he deals with poverty, romance and Squizzy Taylor. Robert entertained students with stories about where he gets his writing inspiration from, and how he fits in his writing practice around his firefighting work.

He also gave students a personal preview of his new book Mr Romanov’s Garden In The Sky.

Other News

Year 7 Students Learn the Thrills and Skills of Movie Making

Year 7 students have been engaged in technical skills-based filming workshops run by our in house Media and Drama specialist – Ms Beckett. Students were shown a range of shot types and camera techniques, and were trained in correct equipment use before unleashing their new skills to shoot their horror films.

Lunchtime Zumba Sessions

Although they were slow to get started, the lunchtime Zumba sessions are now an established part of the extra-curricular activities at Blackburn High School. The sessions have been moved from the Gymnasium to the Drama Room D19. Students who attend enjoy the relaxed atmosphere and the ability to let go and enjoy the music. They are growing in confidence and bringing along their friends to subsequent sessions.

The sessions are a great way to warm up in winter, and they are a real mood booster, with students finishing the sessions in a happier mood than when they started. I encourage more students to get involved and reap the benefits of this form of dance fitness. Ms Chockalingam

Other News