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High Notes, Vol 24 No 12, May 05 2023

From the Principal

High Talent

At the recent National Latin Examination, High linguists earned several gold medals with a standout performance from Lachlan Yuen (9S) who achieved a perfect score 40/40.  Well done boys! Congratulations to Dean Johnsun (11F) who won gold in the senior foil at the Roberta Nutt Shield Individual Fencing competition. It was the first High victory in this event for more than twenty years.  In the senior men’s Epee, Tommy Xu (10E) won the gold while Jarrod Su (12R) shared the bronze.  In the senior men’s sabre Jayden Ho (12R) won equal bronze.  Great results from the High team overall.  Congratulations to Eric Scholten (11R) who was named runner up in the highly competitive, prestigious and challenging Lawrence Campbell Oratory Competition.

Weights Room – Change of Season

My belief is that core strength and conditioning is essential for all sports all the time. In sports where a weights session has been made compulsory for students for selection purposes in Term 2, I am opening a window for these students to join the weights room. Membership will be open until Friday 12 May. These special memberships will expire at the end of the long vacation at the end of Term 4. I expect all students to then take out full year memberships in 2024. The process is to pay at the front office and take the receipt to Mr Rich to be included in the Weights Room membership roster. This will entitle you to unlimited access to the Weights Room when it is open.

The Technology Levy

At High, the 2022 expenditure for technology and communication in teaching and learning was $854,597.  To support technology the Department of Education makes an annual grant of hardware. All of the current budget is paid for by parents and school community funds. We are not an eT4L school. Our specifications for ICT exceed DoE standards and we support these higher standards ourselves. In 2022, parents contributed $315,797 by way of their contributions to the Technology Levy. The wages bill for our four ICT staff members and HT teacher relief alone communication and security ($86,084). Network project upgrades- replacement of storage network and core server cost $78,213. Copier capital costs and system software ($77,182). The necessary network distributor isolation from staffrooms cost $53,935. The Governors Centre broadcast and streaming fit-out ($33,645). AV standardisation cost $8,170.

We expect to spend $864,300 on technology and communication support for learning this year. The plan equates to $716 for each student. Our technology levy is requested from parents to ensure that our school can supply cutting-edge technology and online tools for teaching and learning. It would be very beneficial for our learning improvement if as many parents as possible supported our technology in teaching and learning program by paying their levy. Your support is very much appreciated. The wonderful support of our parents over the last 23 years contributing their technology levy has enabled us to keep upgrading our services to staff and students to be at the leading edge of online learning delivery.

Assessment and Reporting

Year 9 assessments commence in Week 3 from Monday May 8 to Friday May 12. Reports will be finalised for students with completed Clearance Forms to discuss with the Principal from May 29.

Sentence Conscious Pedagogy:  Sentence variety makes for more interesting reading

There four sentence types: declarative (a statement of an idea or argument); imperative (a command); interrogative (a question) and exclamatory (an exclaimed statement). Students need to know their grammar [D]. Do your homework! [Im]. Have you done your homework today? [In] How good is watching free to air international sport! [E]. Practice distinguishing among sentence types and converting them from one type to another. Try to vary your sentence types to align with the mood of the writer. Eg Happy – exclamatory. Reflective – interrogatory.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal