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High Notes, Vol 24 No 16, June 02 2023

From the Principal

High Talent

In the International Mathematical Modelling Challenge (IM2C) the High team 'Calcaholics' have had their entry sent to international judging. Congratulations to Disen Liu (10E), Jeff Tse (10R), Andrew Pye (10R) and Matthia Elgawly (10R). Aarav Mishra (8M) was interviewed and featured in the Sydney Morning Herald for his sketch of the Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi with the caption Jai Hind (victory to India). The Prime Minister’s visit has drawn large crowds from our Indian diaspora both from here and interstate. Well done, Aarav!  High’s 8B Debating team won the final of the Friday Evening Debating Competition (FED). Congratulations to Arnav Kaushik, Ryan Park, Sajan Thiagalingam (from 8T) and Alay Mahidadia (8E). At the NSW Schools Fencing League U14 Individual Epee competition held at St Andrews, Hudson Cai (9M) won Gold and Benjamin Wu (9F) won Silver. A belated special mention to all our Marching Band members and their conductor for representing High once again at the Anzac Day March. Thank you all for your efforts over many weeks.

Winter Sports Assembly 2023

Recently, we held our first Winter Sports Assembly. My speech to the assembly is reprinted below:

"Special guest Ben Whitaker (SHS-1991), parents, staff, students, welcome to our first Winter Sports Assembly, honouring football, rugby and cross country. We gather together before the first official match of the GPS competition – winter season - to introduce some of our winter teams and acknowledge the work of our staff, coaches and committees. Our second assembly next term will complete the process for the other winter sports.

"In our Football program, I would like to thank MIC Sam Higgins who has built up the strength of the Football program at High over the last four years. Our former Football Coaching Coordinator, Dylan Deep-Jones has left us for a full-time gig. I want to acknowledge his work over the years for High Football. Thank you to our Football teaching staff – Jamie Kay, Kurt Rich, Matthew Hood, Jeremy Ohlback and Kety Manolios. We acknowledge and appreciate our coaches- Alexander Barnstone, Oliver Jones, Dean Rong (2019), Alex Loke (2019), Andy Danis (2021), Ohm Bhandari (2021), Mushfique Ahmed (2021), Samir Uddin (2021), Justin Nonis (2021), Jethro Samson (2021), Ajay Verma (2021), Aryan Zaman (2021), Rishi Wig (2021), David Li (2022), Tahmid Choudhury (2022), Albert Giles (2022), Tarrant Williams (2022), Jack Smiles (2022) and Harsh Shirodhar (2022). We appreciate all the support and time offered by our Parent Committee - Kevin Leung, Cynthia Leung, Utpal Baruah, Hui Ching Baruah, Gary Fiene and Luke Nottage. Thank you to you all. Let us hope for another improved season.

"I want to thank Vivian Paul for his efforts as Rugby MIC this year. Let’s hope this is the start of a rugby risorgimento at High. Thank you to High staff - retiring MIC Matthew Cotton (for stewardship of the program in recent years, mentoring the new MIC, and being an elite, casual referee); John James and Stuart Olsen (for training support and Saturday help); Mr George Barris (for mentoring and support); Hannah Jackson (for support and encouragement of rugby as an option for students). Thank you to our enthusiastic coaches - Jack Bowditch (St Ignatius) and Liam Scolari (Joeys) for the first XV, Vinnie Dorahy (2020), Edison Dorahy (2019), Jivan Naganathan (2021) Adrian Wong (2921), Jordan Wong (2022), Nelson Cheng (2022), James Wei (2022), Leon Chau (2022) and Thomas Britton (2022). Thank you also to the Parents Committee - Greg Gerstl, Yves Stenning, Diana Chan, Mohit Singh, David Britton, Andrew Hybler, Kerrie Greville and Andrew Kuo. We appreciate your time and effort on behalf of the program.

"Rebecca Dam, MIC cross country, has organised an efficient and seamless sporting program for our boys. Thank you again, Rebecca and to John Prorellis for his long term support for cross country, assisting Rebecca. Thank you again to our coaches, Thomas Schanzer (SHS-2020), Rhys Shariff (SHS-2021) and Kane Shields (SHS-2022). Also, thank you to the twenty cross-country parents who volunteered to help on the High GPS Cross Country Host event at Centennial Park.

"Sydney Boys High School has a long and proud rugby history. We have had some great rugby internationals as Old Boys– Peter Johnson, Chris Whitaker, Peter Crittle, Keith Cross, Syd King, John Brass – but none more influential than John Thornett. He was School Captain in 1951, played in the first XV and rowed in the first VIII for two years.  He held school records in breaststroke U13s to U16s.  He represented NSW in Water Polo. He was Captain of Australia in 16 tests and 47 tour matches during eight international tours with the Wallabies. He was the second player to play 100 games for his country. Claimed by some as Australia’s greatest ever rugby captain, he ‘was solid, dependable, unwavering, a man of undoubted modesty’ – ‘a man of sterling character and high ethics’. In his long career (1955-1967) John played 37 test matches and 77 representative fixtures in the Australian team. He was inducted into the Wallabies Hall of Fame in 2005. As a person and a player, John Thornett was a fine sporting role model who made history at High and served his country proudly. Check out his blazer and portrait next to Mr Kay’s office. All you representative players have an opportunity this season to add to the High story and tradition. It is not so much the score that counts as how you played the game – as sportsmen…with courage, integrity and dedication. I congratulate our GPS representative players on their selection into the first and second grade teams of our winter sports and wish that all our boys who have made GPS teams grow as competitors and as people during the season, whatever the outcomes of their contests may be."

Assessment and Reporting

Year 10 assessments commence in Week 7 from Monday June 5 to Friday June 9. Reports will be finalised for students with completed Clearance Forms to discuss with the Principal from June 27. Year 12 Assessments commence on Friday June 9 and continue until Friday June 16.

Sentence Conscious Pedagogy: Sentence Combining

Practising sentence combining effectively teaches grammar and usage; encourages students to produce more complex sentences; enables students to see various options for crafting sentences; exposes students to varied writing structures and enhances syntactic flexibility; helps students focus on what is important to include in a sentence; and improves fluency in writing. Give students a series of short declarative sentences and have them find various ways of combining those sentences into one longer, complex sentence. E.g. The topic was black holes. The teacher explained the physics well. I found it hard to understand. Even though the teacher explained the physics of black holes well, I found the topic hard to understand.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal