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High Notes, Vol 11 No 18, June 11 2010From the Principal
High Talent
On Line P & C Forum To access the P&C Forum go to and login to the School Intranet using your username and password details. Access P&C Discussions using the left hand menu. ON-line P&C has a series of discussion questions on which we are seeking feedback. In addition, I encourage parents to use ON-line P&C as a way of providing input on any issues which are of concern or suggestions you wish to make. Please take this opportunity to express your views about school matters that affect you or your son.
Reports – Years 12, 9 and 10
Winter Sports Assembly "Special guest Ewen McKenzie, players, coaches, staff, parents students – welcome to our Winter Sports assembly for 2010. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land where we gather, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and pay our respects to them and their elders past and present. "Since the last time I addressed a winter assembly I am pleased to find that a culture shift is occurring in response to the three training sessions policy. I want to thank our Head Teacher Sport, Mark Pavone, for embedding the policy that I discussed last year. School policy is that three training sessions per week must be completed for selection in A or B GPS teams and are recommended for C teams. We expect members of first and second grade to take responsibility for personal physical preparation by logging for strength and endurance and sprint training sessions. Other teams have lesser requirements at High but not in other GPS schools. We have to respond to the new reality of much more frequent and disciplined sports training, right through our grades. To support the existing logbook system that has been administered and monitored by MICs and Jason Tassell, Mr Pavone has added personal contract letters setting out explicit expectations for boys wanting to participate in GPS competition teams. "Our winter sports are again very well attended overall in 2010 but I regret that a number of older boys who used to play rugby have dropped out in the senior school. Depth is critical in our rebuilding program. The rugby program in the age groups 13-15 has been given a boost with the appointment of Corey Swan as Junior School Coaching Coordinator. We need that momentum to grow this season so that we can reach our goal of 12 teams in the Junior Program. I urge boys to stick together going forward so that we can field more than four teams in the Senior School in 2011. Thank you also to Geoff Stein for his commitment as MIC and the tireless Geoff Andrews from the Rugby Committee for his work in getting the season off to a good start. Association Football is our most popular winter sport. Thank you again to Richard Gifford for his efficient administration of the sport and for his recruitment of coaches. "Andrew Bennie is taking first grade again and an experienced new coach, Mehdi Hazrati, is guiding second grade. Thank you for your involvement. Football is lagging behind in physical preparation but more coaches and teams are working on a culture shift. We are building our structure in defence but need more flair in attack. Let’s have more shots on goal in the GPS season boys! I notice that some morning training sessions for junior teams are compromised quite frequently because boys are late to training. If your coach can make the effort to be there so can you! "Volleyball, our most successful winter sport, continues to be well managed by Michael Kay, Dr Ganderton and Ms Trompetter. The open team continues to win against school competition in NSW. High has built a fine tradition in this sport in the last decade. Thank you to Cathy Meaney and the Sydney High Rifle Club Inc for the development of the target rifle shooting program. We have re established our TAS visit and hope to maintain our GPS high standard with back to back premierships. The sport has grown in popularity and we are developing a sustainable model looking forward. "Cross country running is a sport that could accommodate more of our senior boys. Thank you to Mr Prorellis, Mr Kesting and his staff for their smooth operation of this sport year on year. With more talent and depth in the senior ranks this year I am hopeful of a better than usual team performance from first grade. Fencing has been given a boost with the new COLA covering the cricket nets giving the sport a permanent home for the first time. A dedicated shed for fencing is being constructed. Acquiring electric registering equipment will also move the participants in the sport to a new level. Thank you to Jenni May for her leadership in developing fencing at High and to Alwyn Wardle, our long serving fencing coach for his loyalty to the program. "This morning I want to outline an approach to managing sports performance. As Sam Stosur said after reaching the final of the French Open “I just thought about the tennis – making the shots”. Golfers and tennis players even at the highest level frequently pause to replay a shot, stroke or putt. When we do something poorly in sport during a contest, we need to re-program ourselves to get back on track and focus on the task ahead. If we do not have a strategy then we get distracted for some time by engaging in self-recrimination affecting our next skill performance. A more positive approach is to use the ARIA method. First acknowledge the error. After a missed tackle, poor pass or missed shot, pause momentarily to tell yourself that you performed the skill poorly. Next, release the past performance. Let it go. Make a throwing or discarding motion to reinforce physically what you are doing mentally, discarding the mistake. Then, imprint a visual image of the correct action. Close your eyes in a pause in play and replay the tackle, pass or shot mentally as would have liked it to be. Do this twice associating yourself with the image of perfect execution of the skill. Finally, ask your body and non-conscious self to do that next time. ALIA is the companion process for reinforcing good performance. If you do something well, acknowledge it, love yourself for it by some gesture, imprint the well executed action by mentally replaying it, then ask the self to do it again next time. When facing tough challenges, using ARIA and ALIA can help our mental states. "I am really please at the overall level of participation in winter sport this year. Congratulations to all boys selected in GPS teams this season. I know that you will all try to uphold the tradition of High – you can’t buy spirit. Good luck to all teams in all sports – Have fun! "
Driving Instruction Survey
Encapsulation works and extra roadway
Electricity Substation Update
Public education – worth investing in
Download a donation form from the website at .
Join our Monthly Giving Program or make a single contribution. Any amount would be most welcome.
If we are to become the school everyone wants us to be, then more of us have to put our money
where our dream is. From the McDonald (Senior) LibraryThe Book Fair has come and gone and much has been achieved we feel from holding such an event. Some books have been donated to the library, many students have had the pleasure of viewing and suggesting titles for the newly established book collection and the profile of the libraries has been raised considerably in the process. We would like to thank the many fantastic volunteer helpers for all their work and support in making this first Book Fair successful. Thanks also go to teachers for bringing students through the library to see the books on display and to those generous teachers and students (and their parents) who donated books. So far these people have donated books: Mr Hannon (Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore); Ms Kaye (Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon); Dale Chen Yr 12 (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button & Six Other Stories); Soorag Prakash Yr 11 (Peeps by Scott Westerfeld); Warren Dang Yr 11 (The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss); Jeffrey Ni Yr 9 (Lady Macbeth’s Daughter by Lisa Klein); Leon Zhang Yr 10 (We by John Dickinson); Chris Morrow Yr 11 (I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells); Elbert Ly Yr 9 (Best of the Best Modern Australian Short Stories by Tim Winton); Francis Pham Yr 11 (61 Hours by Lee Child). Their generosity has meant these fantastic new titles will be available to all students for years to come and they will be the first borrowers to read them. So many thanks once again to these generous library benefactors! We are still waiting for a few people to bring in their payment so if you haven’t yet done so can you make sure this happens this week? The library will also be purchasing many titles suggested by teachers and students and these will be advertised in this article in future issues of High Notes as well as new titles purchased and selected by the librarian.
Other news helpful to HSC students is regarding HSC Seminars to be held by the Marrickville
Library Service. Please find attached to this article a flyer with topics being covered and
dates they will be held. All seminars are free and if you live in the area these are very useful
and relevant to Year 11 or 12 students. Parent-Teacher Interviews
Year 7 will take place on
Years 10, 11 and 12 will take place on
Years 8 and 9 will take place on
Booking interviews with your son’s teachers
News From LatinOn Wednesday, 2nd June, Year 12 Latin students attended the Year 12 Latin Study Day. This is an annual event organised by the Classical Languages Teacher association of New South Wales. Each year, a number of guest lecturers present informative talks and workshops on the Latin texts being studied for the Higher School Certificate. The lecturers are invited from a number of leading Universities and Schools. For example, this year, an excellent talk was presented on the Roman author, Cicero, by Dr Paul Roche from Sydney University. All aspects of the course are covered and the students are presented with advice on Unseen Translation technique.
This year, the venue for the Study Day was Shore School, in North Sydney. A number of schools,
both State and Private, were represented. A seminar day booklet was provided for each student.
Thank you to the Classical Languages Teachers Association for organising this worthwhile
event. From the Andrews Library
BOOK FAIR Boys whose donations have arrived at the school will also be informed by DET email so this needs to be checked – (through Portal) Donations ready to be picked up will be notified also through Reservations on the Portal Books are now arriving from Borders Online so everything works.
MISSED THE BOOK FAIR AND LIKE TO DONATE ONE BOOK? Borders Bondi will be offering a discount of 20% off any full priced books to all students and teachers at our school for four days only – from Thursday June 17th to Sunday June 20th. All that is required is to present their student / teachers identification card.
NEW SENIOR FICTION - Andrews library.
NEW SENIOR NON FICTION
NEW JUNIOR NON FICTION
TEACHER REFERENCE SBHS Debating
FED Success!
Year 11 - FED Champions
Newington Social
More information can be found at and will be emailed to
you on a weekly basis. Music Notes
Music Tour 2010 to France & Flanders After a lengthy bus trip, the tour band arrived at the peaceful town of Peronne. Once the bus was unpacked we were struck with awe walking into the massive venue hosting our two performances that day. The concert hall had the full shebang, professional lighting, sound equipment and a great stage, we couldn’t wait to show Peronne what we could do. After a few touch ups in what little rehearsal time we had, the venue was opened to our first audience of the day, a huge wave of children, parents and teachers taking their seats and waiting for what was to be a brilliant performance from the Tour String Ensemble, Combined Orchestra, Concert Band and Stage Band. Following an uproarious applause and the giving of souvenirs to our cheering audience, High packed up and went to the Great War Museum down the road where we gained a further understanding of the importance of what we were representing on tour.
Our history lesson was then followed by a scrumptious dinner generously provided by the
townspeople and with full stomachs and renewed spirits we set up for our second concert that
evening for the rest of the town. As usual, High went out with a bang, our best performance so
far. We were preceded by the Peronne Military Bagpipe Band but after the performance of the Tour
Stage Band, the audience gave a standing ovation, compelling us to play one last number before we
signed off on our last informal concert. After receiving enough appreciation from the audience to
fill the bus, we packed up and set off back to the hostel with a huge renewed sense of
achievement.
ENSEMBLE Rehearsal Times for 2010
Marching Band ASX Share Market Game 2010Another year another dollar! Over 300 hundred students participated in the Game with Yr 10 students filling the top ten places in the SBHS rankings. It was pleasing to see Yr 7 students participating for the first time and holding their own in comparison to the senior students. Well done to everyone who participated in the Game. This Game has been challenging due to the market being impacted by what is happening in Greece, proposed government tax changes, and continued concerns about the Chinese economy. For this Game
Thomas Zhang (7th in Australia and 5th in NSW) Strategy:
Abeer Khan, Adrian Chan (12th in Australia and 8th in NSW) Strategy:
Anonymous Yr 11 Economics student (Last in SBHS) Share market Game 2 commences early in Term 3.
Winning National Syndicate Total $59,147 (Yr 12) From CareersCombined Careers & Courses University Information Evening 2010Thursday 17 June 2010 in the Great Hall, 6.30pm. All Year 12 students are expected to attend this event. Participants include, UNSW, Sydney University, UTS, Macquarie, Western Sydney, ANU, KPMG, St Paul's College & Firstpoint USA UNSW Scholarship Information EveningOn Thursday July 22 UNSW will host a Scholarships Information Evening. The purpose of the evening is to provide greater detail on the range of scholarships available at UNSW. The evening is aimed at Years 11 and 12 students and their parents. The evening will consist of a general talk about scholarships at UNSW including the UNSW Co-op Program and Commonwealth Funded Scholarships. The general session will be followed by rotating smaller talk/question breakout sessions; there will also be information booths for one-on-one discussions. The program can be viewed on the event website The location of the event if the Sir John Clancy Auditorium, UNSW Kensington Campus. Registration is required as space is limited, and will open from June 2, 2010. Registration can be completed at . Rifle ShootingThe GPS Squad for 2010 was announced at the Winter Sports Assembly last Friday and they are in full training at the moment. They will be defending their title as GPS Co-Premiers at Hornsby in July 2010. The training regime for this winter season for Fullbore is from 8:30am – approx. 5pm each Saturday. The Smallbore training runs from 8:30am – approx. 12 noon. A team of 8 Fullbore Shooters will be travelling to Wingham for the long weekend to compete in the Wingham Prize Shoot. The bus will leave from the Flat at approx, 3:30pm on Friday 11th June and will return approx. 11am on Monday 14th June 2010. The boys are also defending their title from last year. Good Luck boys!! We are expecting great things! Shooting is cancelled on Saturday the 12th June due to the trip to Wingham.
GPS QUAD FOR 2010
Catherine Meaney Volleyball Report
First Grade Report A strong performance by John from the Universal Position combined with Nelson and Merlin's consistent displays from the Outside Hitter Position, Riverview suffered greatly in their attempts to gain control. High’s strong serving game effectively exploited Riverview's lack of technique in passing.
This game was vital to win for First Grade as it was the last GPS game before CHS Top 16.
Second Grade Report The clash began with strong serving from Ennes. Ignatius seemed unable to pass the ball to set up an effective attack. When the ball did find its way to the High end of the court, strong hits and cunning tips from our middles left the Ignatius defenders stunned. High rounded out the first set with a convincing 25-5 margin. High used the second set to gain some much needed experience with more elaborate plays and attacks. However, unforced errors and strong determination from the Ignatius team led to the set being tied at 24-24. Determined not to drop a set, Pat and Brendan set up some strong plays and rounded out the set 26-24 through sheer force of will. Devastated by their inability to take the second set, the Ignatius side was demoralised going into the third. Furthermore, a switch to a more conservative, yet effective playing style from High resulted in the third being almost a carbon copy of the first set, High eventually rounding it out 25-10.
The win against a resurgent Riverview squad leaves High unchallenged at the top of the table and
feeling confident going into next week.
Year 9 Volleyball Early into the match we were frustrated with our inability to set up consistent spikes, letting Grammar reach an early seven point lead. However, after some consistent serving we were able to pull back and eventually edge out the set. The second saw Grammar lose their earlier form, letting us win in two straight sets. Next came Grammar’s B team, who had great trouble serving and returning, resulting in a complete wipe-out of their side.
These encounters have given our team much needed experience and have identified our main weak
points, especially in unforced errors.
Year 8 volleyball Report Sydney High won the first match against Grammar’s B team in straight sets. We completely dominated Grammar, taking the two sets 21-6 and 21-11. Their team was definitely intimidated as we pulled off some strong 3 pass hits. Our second match started badly. Grammar’s A team took the first set 21-17 as we faced their best server. Poor communication also initially hindered our efforts. We came back in the second set and took the second set 21-15. This levelled the score for the decider. The final set started well until we found ourselves in a bad position allowing Grammar to take the lead 11-4. However, with lots of determination we managed to bounce back and regain the lead 12-11 and eventually take the match 15-13.
I am very proud of my team as we showed great playing skills and determination to manage a
massive comeback. High SocietyThe Bulletin Board for Sydney Boys High P & C
Julie Connolly Joint P&C Meeting SBHS and SGHS
7.00pm, Wednesday 30th June, Great Hall In addition, Barbara Taylor is organising supper for the evening and needs parents to help set up the supper area near the Great Hall kitchen from 5.30pm on Wednesday 30th June. Please email Barbara directly This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you can help. Meet at the Great Hall kitchen. Upcoming Parent Meetings and Events
Thursday 17th June –
Monday 21st June, 3.00pm–6.30pm –
Thursday 24th June, 3.00pm-7.30pm –
Wednesday 30th June, 3.00pm-6.30pm -
Wednesday 30th June, 7.00pm – From the CanteenIt was a wild cold wet week last week which brought the boys in droves to the canteen so we certainly appreciated the help of the following people.... Anne Aylmer, Betty Chan, Ming Lee, Annette Ng, Pauline Chan. Tania Slinko, Vikki Moller, Kate Price,Cindy Tseu, Liz O'Hare, Vikki Angell, Helen Lazarou, Jenny Lian, Katrina Morrow, Debbie Dukes, Heawon Jeong. A big thank you toTania for especially coming in on Friday to make the Sports Assembly sandwiches, after already coming in for her duty on the Tuesday. For a large busy canteen as we have at High, we really need 4 volunteer helpers each day ie 20 every week to share the workload. If you are able to come into canteen at all at any time – either on your own or link up with a friend, please do!! Karen and Tracey would love to see you and will give you easy simple jobs to do that will help them out a lot. Give them a call at the canteen on 9360 4027. Boys – if service is slow occasionally at canteen, it may be for the following reasons....
Many thanks to the Prefects who help out on canteen – your assistance is important and
appreciated. SBHS GPS Athletics Training Timetable - 2010
Applications for Years 8 - 12, 2011Applications for Years 8 - 12, 2011 close on 29 July 2010. Application forms are are available from the school visit: and click the link to enrolments. Phillip Day Memorial ScholarshipFor existing or enrolling students in years 7 - 12 who meet the scholarship selection criteria. To apply for a scholarship visit for full details. Hear Dr Michael Carr-Greg, 30 June 2010Fantastic Opportunity to Hear One of Australia's Leading Voices on Teenagers
7.00pm, Wednesday 30th June, Great Hall The Five Greatest Challenges for Parents in 2010The joint Sydney Boys and Sydney Girls P&C meeting for this year – 7.00pm, Wednesday 30th June, in the Great Hall – will feature Dr Michael Carr-Gregg speaking on The Five Greatest Challenges for Parents in 2010, including aspects of online safety, alcohol, sleep and other key issues. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear one of Australia’s leading voices on adolescents and we urge parents to attend this P&C presentation. Dr Michael Carr-Gregg is one of Australia's highest profile psychologists and is described by the Sunday Age, as one of the country's leading authorities on teenage behaviour. He specialises in the areas of parenting adolescents and adolescent mental health. Michael is the Consultant Psychologist to the Victorian Secondary Schools Principals’ Association and is a founding member of the National Coalition Against Bullying. He is an official ambassador for beyondblue and Mindmatters - one of 16 youth suicide prevention programs run by the Federal Government - and has served on the advisory committee for the Federal Government's Boys' Education Lighthouse School Programme. Educated in Kenya, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Michael is married with two sons. For seven years he worked as an Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne, before going into private practice in the Melbourne suburb of Kew. Michael has worked in private practice as a family therapist, child psychologist and clinical psychologist, as an academic, researcher and spent four years working as a political lobbyist. He wrote his PhD on adolescents with cancer at the University of NSW which resulted in the formation of CanTeen - a support group for teenagers with cancer in 1984. Michael has a high media profile working on national TV on Channel 7's Sunrise and The Morning Show as well as Fairfax Radio 3AW. He is a columnist for Girlfriend and Australian Doctor and has written six books, including the best selling Princess Bitchface Syndrome - how to survive teenage girls for Penguin in 2007 and has just finished another book When to Really Worry which was released in 2010. Dr Michael Carr-Gregg is an informed, entertaining and inspiring speaker addressing some of the most critical issues for our adolescents today. This is a great opportunity for High parents to hear his insights. Supper will be served following the presentation. |