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High Notes, Vol 24 No 25, August 18 2023

From the Principal

High Talent

Congratulations to our first grade Volleyball team who became GPS Champions after defeating King’s on Saturday to finish the season unbeaten. The team comprised Edward Ly (12) Captain, Anthony Hwang (12), Sean Lim (12), Dimitri Logothetis (12), John Liu (12), Ossie Xie (12), Karan Dahiya (11), Arnav Gupta (11), Nelson Lee (10), Steven Yin (10), Jerald Yu (10) and Andy Zhang (10). Our second grade boys were co-premiers after concluding the season with a single loss. The team members were Byron Xie (12), Ross Zhou (12), Roy Chae (11) Captain, Haoran Zhang (11), Xile Xie (11), Dev Punjabi (11), Branson Chan (10), Jinho Moon (10), Owen Li (10) and Jonathon Zhang (10). An impressive result from Max Russell (12T) who was GPS Cross-Country Champion again this year. Adit Mahidadia (12F) won a bronze medal at the International Geography Competition – well done!  Barker hosted the NSWSFL U16 and U19 Individual Foil Competition on Saturday. Andrew Wang (11S) came equal 3rd with Bronze in the U19 Individual Foil event as did Benjamin Dang (9R) in the U16 Individual Foil. Well done, boys! Axel Lam (8E) is competing in the Australian Youth Indoor Volleyball Championships in Victoria next month. Good luck, Axel!

National Science Week 12 - 20 August

Australia celebrates science and technology for a whole week each year. More than 1,000 events are organised across Australia, delivered in universities, research institutions, science centres, museums, libraries and schools. This year’s theme is ‘Innovation: Powering Future Industries.’ All industries are included but this year there is particular emphasis on the advancement in technology occasioned by the deployment of artificial intelligence and its integration into workflows. There are supporting resources available online, including .

The National Day of Action Against Bullying and Violence is August 18

As a society and as a school community we need collective positive action to grow connections to prevent bullying. This year’s theme is ‘growing connections.’ It promotes the importance of student connectedness and a sense of belonging and feeling safe – accepted, respected, included and supported. Connections and social skills are protective factors against bullying and they enable positive help-seeking behaviours in students. We have as our school values, compassion and respect, both concepts are antithetical to any form of bullying. We all need to reflect upon the nature of our actions and utterances - spoken, written or on social media. What we say and do should be to avoid harm to someone’s feelings or self-respect. To see what is happening on the day, go to

Wear it Purple Day - August 25

Wear it Purple strives to foster supportive, safe, empowering and inclusive environments for rainbow young people.  It was established in 2010 to demonstrate hope to young rainbow people, to affirm that there were other people who did support and accept LGBTIQA+ youth.

The aim of the day is to celebrate and support diverse young people and to challenge societal attitudes to help shape a fairer, more humane and just society. As an organisation, ‘Wear it Purple’ has key focus areas. It acts as a resource for awareness raising through supporting Wear It Purple Days in schools. It provides opportunities for rainbow young people to develop their skills and expand their networks. It provides supportive and safe spaces, both digital and physical, where young rainbow people can feel proud of who they are. Wear it Purple also collaborates with other organisations to further the inclusion of rainbow young people in society.

Since the inaugural basketball game in 2013 between SBHS and SGHS Prefects was organised on Wear it Purple Day by Nelson Tang, the celebratory game has become a High tradition. Players wear purple and we have had the involvement of local police at least since 2019. This year we also have a Kahoot, wrist bands, hairspray and a Twenty 10 workshop. We are having multiple activities in lieu of an assembly. Next Friday, let us all celebrate how inclusive a fair-minded country like Australia can be.

Properties Update

The refurbished toilets beneath the Great Hall were opened for use by students this week. What we need now is for all our students to respect the better facilities that we now can enjoy and do our best to keep them looking the way they do now.

Sentence Conscious Pedagogy:
Generating a Concluding Statement.

Generate a concluding sentence as a class. Turn a boring topic or concluding sentence into an engaging one by choosing a different sentence type; adding an appositive; employing a sentence expanding technique; or by beginning the sentence with a subordinating conjunction. Translate the detailed notes of students into complete sentences and combine those sentences with the topic and concluding sentences they’ve already written to form a coherent paragraph. Give them a teacher-composed paragraph (or text) for students to deconstruct into topic and concluding sentences and number the detail sentences.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal