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High Notes, Vol 24 No 26, August 25 2023

From the Principal

High Talent

Congratulations to our Chess Team who regained the GPS Chess Championship Cup last Saturday. Our eight players and reserve were: Toby Huey (11S), Quan Nguyen (9E), Nestor Chan (9R), Vedantik Bhattacharyya (9S), Aaron Huang (9S), Leo Le (9S), Anay Gautam (8R), Kayden Santoso (9M) and Jinda Zhu (8R). Our thanks go to MIC for Chess, Rowena Barr and to long-time chess coach Vlad Feldman. The idea of holding a GPS Invitational Chess Tournament was first proposed by Alex Feldman (SHS-2003) when he was a chess coach. High has hosted and sponsored the GPS Chess competition since 2006, retaining the trophy in most years unless pipped by a SGS team. Congratulations boys on your team’s win!

Results from the first Invitational Athletics Carnival: U13s 200m Owen Trinh (7E) – 1st 24.7 and Mekaeel Khan (7M) 100m 3rd, high jump 3rd; U14s Alex Ruhfus (8E) 100m 1st 11.2, 200m 1st 24.2, Mark Yan (9F) 400m 1st 55.81, Joshua Kuo (8R) hurdles 3rd, 4 x 100m relay 3rd; U15s Lachlan Leung (10E) long jump 1st 6.1m, 200m 3rd, Nicholas Fung (10E) hurdles 3rd, 4 x 100m relay 3rd; Opens Max Russell 12T 3000m 2nd, Oscar Greville (12M) shot put 2nd. Well done to all competitors in the first athletics carnival of the season.

Tell Them from Me Survey

The results are in on our latest TTFM survey which DoE requires schools to participate in to obtain state-wide data on the wellbeing and perspectives of our students. Respondents N= 834. Some positives from the survey –

‘Students feel accepted and valued by their peers and by others at the school.’ School mean 83% (State 66%).
‘Students that do not get into trouble at school for disruptive or inappropriate behaviour’ (96%) State (87%).’
‘Students understand there are clear rules and expectations for classroom behaviour’ School 68%, State 56%.
‘School staff emphasise academic skills and hold high expectations for all students to succeed’. School 81%, State 71%.
‘Students feel that they have someone at school who consistently provides encouragement and can be turned to for advice’. School 69%, State 60%.

We realise that even in these areas of positive perceptions by students there are things we could do to lift our performance.

On the negative side, even though 90% of students agree that if they are being bullied or see someone else being bullied, they know where they can go to get help, we still have 22% of respondents (State 21%) who are subject to moderate to severe physical, social or verbal bullying or are bullied over the internet. (Our issues are predominantly with social media and often occur outside of school hours). We need to do more to encourage students to report bullying to someone so that we can respond with restorative processes to address the relationship between the students involved as bullies or victims.

Also, on two measures relating to learning dispositions, we would have hoped to have had more positive perceptions. ‘Students set challenging goals for themselves in their schoolwork and aim to do their best’ (School 68%, State 62%). Our Strategic Improvement Plan is addressing goal setting by students as an area for improvement over the next three years. On perseverance, described as ‘the extent to which students can pursue their goals to completion, even when faced with obstacles’ (High 44% v State 36%) - we need to do more to equip students with the skills to persist in the face of setbacks because the goal they set is valuable and worth their renewed effort.

Pockets for Participation

Looking back over the blazers on the corridor walls, one can see all different shapes and sizes of ‘pocket awards’. Mr Kay and I have been discussing the issue of awarding pockets and thinking about what the purpose of ‘pockets’ is. Essentially Year 12 students get to wear a blazer around that is adorned with their achievements. Only the excellent participants have been acknowledged. We now want to open up the area on the school blazer now exclusively taken by a large music pocket to other co-curricular areas. Consequently, Mr Kay has commissioned designs for pockets for four areas – music, chess, debating and or public speaking and sport. They are designed so that three can fit on the same pocket as one music pocket.

From 2024, if you have participated in any of the four activities continuously for five years, and to the attendance requirements of the activity, as well as being involved in the activity in Semester 2 of Year 11, you can apply for and purchase from the school, a smaller size pocket to sew on your blazer. For sport, you will have to have competed in two GPS competition sports for each of the five previous years and be enrolled currently in summer and sport at the time of the award, to earn a sports pocket in Year 11. As a pre-condition, you will have to commit to two sports in Year 12 as well. It does not matter the level of the team you are in, what matters is that you are wearing the symbol of your grit and perseverance on your blazer. In consideration for tradition and current student expectations, eligible students will still be able to purchase a Music Pocket of original size from the High Store in 2023 and 2024. Thereafter, the expectation will be that smaller pockets are both the policy and the new normal.

Sentence Conscious Pedagogy:
I do, we do, you do…

First the teacher supplies the paragraph and breaks it down into the component parts. Next, the class writes the paragraph using the SPB and the topic sentence, concluding statement and notes in the middle. Finally, the students compose their own paragraph using the SPB. E.g. Anything irrelevant and not to the point is judged to be ‘beside the mark’. (TS) Archery phrase – now a sport – village defence of country – citizens practised – trained bowmen – competed to score hits – cloth or leather attached to a tree – misses and hits the tree ‘beside the mark’ - imprint on language. (notes). Anything that was irrelevant and therefore did not count – like those misses in archery – became known as ‘beside the mark’. (CS) Write the paragraph in full, with at least three sentences as well as the TS and CS.
Dr K A Jaggar
Principal