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High Notes, Vol 24 No 1, February 03 2023

From the Principal

Welcome or Welcome back!

Welcome to all our returning staff and students to what we trust will be a better year of learning and achievement for High. I want to welcome our 180 Year 7 students and our 38 new students in Years 8, 9 and 11. I want to assure you of our commitment to foster your rapid and successful integration into the High culture. We have five priority actions. We nurture your academic growth through a wide range of subjects, courses and competitions. We develop you as a whole person through the format curriculum and a large variety of co-curricular activities. We try to promote in you a sense of belonging to High through encouraging full participation in our six-day programs. We endeavour to develop you as global citizens and future leaders through our community service and school leadership opportunities. We support you in all your activities through our numerous support staff, incorporated associations, committees and governance organisations.

Our focus this year is on sentence conscious pedagogy. We want to try and teach sentence building and combining explicitly to enhance the clarity, coherence and quality of our written responses in all years. We have a small set of proven strategies that will be applied across the curriculum to support teachers and students in the collaborative task of improving whole-school literacy.

Staff Changes

We welcome also many new staff members for 2023. In English, Rosa Brown has been appointed. Harper Boon (for Penny Schlam), Nicole Lau (for Rebecca Mellor) and Alanna Dadam (for Jo Curry in Term1) are relieving. In Mathematics, Jenny Tao and Richard Wong have been appointed and Mia Zheng is relieving. We welcome back Jessica Millar. In Industrial Arts, Sophie Favelle is relieving for Paul Scrivener. In LOTE, Tommy Zheng has been appointed as our new Head Teacher Languages. Christina Eckmann is replacing Isabell St Leon who has retired. In music, Peter Aoun is relieving for Rita Miller who has retired. In PDHPE, Stuart Olsen is relieving for Hanna Jackson who is relieving as Head Teacher Sport while Steve Marcos is on secondment as a DP at Alexandria Park HS. David Smith is serving as Head Teacher PDHPE (school funded). In Social Science, Jessica Christodoulou and Jake Rowlands are relieving for staff acting in a higher position. We welcome back Janette Jackson. In Visual Arts, we welcome back Elianna Apostolides and welcome Karen Profolio who is relieving for Claire Reemst for one day per week. Matt Cotton is continuing as Careers Adviser while Anthony Cipolla is on leave.

High Talent

Well done to Jo Kawahashi (SHS-2022) who was accepted into the Co-Op Scholarship program at UNSW, studying materials science and engineering honours. Congratulations to Yu Ming Lee (SHS-2022) who has been offered a place at Oxford University to study Classical Archaeology and Ancient History.

Premier’s Back to School Vouchers

Parents, guardians, carers or students can apply for 3 x $50 vouchers to help pay for school supplies – like school uniforms, shoes, bags, textbooks, technology and stationery. You have until 30 June 2023 to use your vouchers, redeemable at the High Store (among many outlets). Get your $150 worth of vouchers. Apply , call 13 77 88 or visit your . You can also save with these vouchers: - $100 voucher for school students to contribute to sport, fitness and recreation costs. - $100 voucher for school students to help cover the cost of creative and cultural activities.

Online resources English: sentence conscious pedagogy

Build better sentences by choosing the right word for your context.

Vocabulary Building (Synonyms/Antonyms)

Ability: power, cleverness, facility, skill, capacity, talent, expertise, aptitude, dexterity, efficiency, qualification.
[weakness, incapacity, imbecility, inability, unreadiness, maladroitness].

About: almost, with respect to, near, nearly, touching, concerning, surrounding, relative to, relating to, in relation to, approximately, touching, roughly, generally.
[afar, away from, precisely, exactly].

Absolute: perfect, complete, unconditional, irrespective, supreme, despotic, autocratic, certain, authoritative, arbitrary, unequivocal.
[imperfect, incomplete, conditional, contingent, relative, dependent, accountable, responsible].

Use available reference resources such as the Collins Thesaurus or the Scholastic Dictionary of Synonyms, Antonyms and Homonyms. Many such resources are available online.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal