LEEMING SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL vOLume 6, September 2022

sustainable city

Venturing into the City on their Planning Sustainable Places excursion, Year 12 Geography Students were ready to experience the urban landscape through the eyes of a Geographer. After uncovering urban renewal in East Perth and discovering both invasion and succession in the Northbridge entertainment district, students took advantage of the transit-oriented development of Subiaco, allowing them to appreciate first-hand the benefits of effective planning strategies and how these influence the sustainability and liveability of a thriving city.

communication conundrum

How many times have you asked someone to do something and had a completely different outcome than expected? How many times have you been in class or in conversation and realised that you haven’t heard the last few minutes of what was being said? Do you know how much of communication is words and how much is body language and tone? These were just some of the questions the Year 11 Careers and Enterprise Students spent time considering when they started a topic on communication. Business feedback suggests that good communication is of paramount importance in the workplace and is one of the weakest skills which students enter the workplace with, so, as a class, we became expert negotiators, bridge builders, artists, sports people and much more!

Students had to communicate without words; spend time convincing others of their opinions; negotiate over who was more deserving on receiving an orange which they would use to save the world; communicate with only words whilst blindfolded to create shapes, draw images and move objects; and use different listening styles to investigating how much they could remember each time.

acing the interview

Dressed to impress in business attire, Career and Enterprise students attended job interviews for a real customer care position with external recruitment experts from Rotary. Students presented portfolios and confidently answered questions in realistic interviews created to prepare them for their next job interview. Interviewers Marilyn Kench, one of the first female tailors in the Australian army, and Greg Wilkins, a retired business owner and financial advisor, were impressed with the preparation and thorough knowledge demonstrated by such job-ready "professionals". Congratulations to Jasmine M., Matilda Y., and Ali S. who were awarded ‘jobs’ as a result of their interviews.

tower trouble

The Competition: Build the tallest freestanding tower in half an hour using only newspaper. What could possibly go wrong? Well, If people form groups, the answer is; just about anything. Competing groups of Year 11 ATAR Psychology students witnessed first-hand how groups can change us, for better or worse. Social loafing occurred when some students thought they could reduce their effort as responsibility was diffused amongst greater numbers, others found competing for scarce resources alienated them from "rival" group members with exaggerated intra-group positivity ensuing, whilst negative attributions crept into to their assessment of other groups' members. One group experienced social facilitation and harnessed cooperation to build a lofty tower, keeping just ahead of all competition until disaster struck right at the very end, allowing their nearest competitor to power to the finish. While it was all good fun, the darker side of groups was duly noted so that students can recognise the insidious nature of group influences in the future and harness groups only for good.

Medieval Grudge Match

Fluctuating Power Shifts between arch-rival Popes and Kings in Medieval Times were complex and can be better understood as a medieval grudge match. So thought Ms Murray's Year 8 students, who gleefully re-enacted some of the pivotal events in the battle for hearts, minds and control of Medieval Europe. From the trump cards: Divine Right vs Threat of Excommunication, to pivotal events including Murder in the Cathedral vs Barefoot Pilgrimage, the real winner of the bouts was student understanding.

weekend adventure

What do History Teachers do on weekends? Learn more history teaching tips and skills, of course! As Co-Vice President of the History Teacher's Association of WA, Leeming's specialist History teacher Sharron Flynn was busy running the 2022 HTAWA State Conference "History: Past, Present and Future". Looked forward to with anticipation each year, this annual event promotes history teaching and provides new content, skills and resources for teachers from all over the State.

challenge accepted!

Some of Leeming's top students accepted the challenge to become historians in Australia's National History Challenge competition, researching World History, examining Australia's past, investigating their community or exploring their own roots. Angus E., Rama C., Gemma W. and Samantha K. all demonstrated quality research, the use of community resources and beautifully presented models to showcase the Causes and Consequences theme and win their way to the State Finals. With judging at the end of September, let us keep our fingers crossed for our consequential historians.

Milla B. Year 11 artwork was exhibited at Young Originals at Edith Cowen University. Her work was carefully selected by the judges out of the 212 entries, with 77 pieces chosen for display, celebrating secondary visual arts programs delivered across WA public schools.

Carly T. Year 12 artwork was exhibited at Meta located at North Metro TAFE. This exhibition focuses on art, design, photography from talented Year 11 and 12 students from WA schools.

Ms A. Archibald, Visual Art Teacher

Visiting Artist Elly Sumner with Year 10 Visual Art Students

Local illustration artist, costume designer and muralist Elly Sumner, visited Leeming Senior High School this term to run a workshop and talk with the two Year 10 Visual Art classes. Elly gave an insight into her own study in the arts and working at theatres in New York and London.

Now, back in Perth, she is continuing her passion of illustration and painting murals. Much of Elly’s inspiration comes from nature, the students did some drawing exercises using some of her techniques using Australian native fauna.

The Year 10 students posed some fantastic questions to Elly about working in the creative industries and gained some new drawing techniques.

Mrs S. Buckland, Graphic Design Teacher

Dance

After holding auditions and many early morning rehearsals, on Monday 5 September, 32 students from Years 9 – 12 boarded a bus to the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre to compete in the heats for YOH Fest 2022.

Act-Belong-Commit YOH Fest (Youth On Health Festival), is a performing and visual art event for West Australian school students combining the fun of the arts with health education to create a unique, exciting and valuable experience for young people.

This year the health theme was “Wellness”. Our Year 12 dance students, lead by our dance captains Lucy and Tegan, created a piece that was nearly eight minutes long titled ‘Overcome’. The performance explored the triggers teenagers feel when overwhelmed and the coping strategies that can be utilised to enhance wellness.

The students demonstrated the core values at Leeming Senior High School of both Harmony and Excellence. The camaraderie and maturity they demonstrated throughout the day was outstanding. The spirit amongst the students was high after the performance as they treated the bus driver to a 45-minute singing extravaganza. We were thrilled to feature in the finalists, and perform in the Finals in October.

A big thank you to Felicity Hill for helping on the day and to all the families that made the trip to Mandurah to support the students.

Mrs E. Brooks, Dance Teacher

Music

Term 3 Music has been packed with performances and incursions. Below is just a snap shot.

Junior Concert Band Master Class

On Tuesday 9 August, we had the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Dale Pointon to do a masterclass with the Junior Concert Band. Dale lectures in pedagogy and music education at UWA and is an active school and community ensemble director, as well as a classroom and instrumental teacher here in WA. He also adjudicates at many Australian festivals and eisteddfods as well as serving on lots of music advisory committees. Dale is larger than life and his passion for music is contagious. The students responded really well to him, listening to his tips and advice on how to blend sound, listen out for the melody, move out of the way if you’re not the melody and to always make the most of the other markings on the page – the dynamics and articulations which help colour the music and bring the musical story to life. There were lots of tips to learn to help improve our ensemble skills.

STEAM

The Greek philosopher Plato said - “I would teach children music, physics and philosophy; but most importantly music”.

This Term, one of the Year 7 music classes had the opportunity to have a STEAM lesson (Stem + Arts) with Mr. Nino Sardi, a retired Science and Physics teacher and Head of Science. This Term, the Year 7 students completed a short unit on learning to play the guitar, reading and playing TAB, guitar chords and reading traditional music notation. Mr. Sardi made his own guitar model especially for our lesson and explored the layman terms of Quality – Pitch – and Loudness and gave the science perspective of the terms - Harmonics – Frequency and Amplitude. He spoke about the properties of pitch/frequency and the unit of measurement – Hertz. He brought in his own Cathode Ray Oscilloscope which he has owned from the 1970’s and a microphone to record the pitch/frequency sounds of the guitar. Students came up and played a note and watched the vibrations in wave form on the Oscilloscope. It was fascinating to see. Mr. Sardi also spoke of the ‘perfect note,’ and the 23rd harmonic. It was an amazing lesson and the students hung on to every word. It was wonderful to witness the close connection of music and science or rather, physics. Thank you Mr. Sardi – your mantra ‘Knowledge is power’ resonated!

Below are some student reflections of the lesson:

'Some things that I liked about the master class lesson is that it was very interactive, I liked how it wasn’t just a teacher speaking and us listening it was very engaging. I also liked how passionate the master class teacher was about the subject. I loved how he brought in a machine to show us how people recorded frequency before modern technology. Thanks for the amazing master class lesson.' Gordon

‘I really liked learning about what Mr. Sardi had to say. I enjoyed learning the different sounds that two types of fishing wire can make when it is tied with two nails on a piece of wood. It was interesting to hear how we could tune it by turning the screws on the side with a screwdriver to match the sound of the piano. I really liked learning about the things that can affect how the fishing wire will sound when it is plucked, how tight the wire is, and the length of the wire can both affect how it sounds. I also enjoyed learning the names for the pitch in physics, because it was different to how we learnt it. Thankyou Mr. Sardi for coming in.’ Lauren

‘I really enjoyed the STEAM lesson today because I learnt new things. It was fun learning things that I had never heard of before like amplitude or harmonics. They were both interesting to learn about. My favourite part of today’s lesson was when we all got to get our instruments out and play a note. Then we could all see if they had a lot of harmonics or if they were really a pure sound. That was a ton of fun because there were lots of different instruments with lots of different sounds. Thankyou Mr Sardi for a wonderful lesson and for teaching me new things.’ Naya

‘Thank you Mr Sardi for this lesson and how music links with science. In this lesson I learned so much, this was a fun experience to have. This was a very different change of the usual lessons.’ Oliver

The Year 10 Music class has been studying Film Music. Listening and analysing film music and looking at the 'how and why' music enhances film. We have studied music clichés used in film music and the melodic contours. Students have begun collaboratively working on compositions using either Ableton live, Musecore or Garageband to create their own bit of film music to a chosen film character. Thanks to Mr. Ryder and his Certificate II students for peer mentoring the Year 10 students on how to best use the program Ableton live.

During the week, Justin Martin from Djurandi Dreaming ran a yarning session with students at lunchtime followed by a session with Year 7 students creating some very impressive boomerangs and telling them a few more yarns as they worked. Their finished boomerangs were added to the display.

All Year 7 students created character biscuits in their Digital Literacy classes as well as competing in a Where’s Wally Scavenger Hunt.

On the final day, the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party was a huge success with more than 200 staff and students dressed in costume, celebrating the importance of reading and Book Week.

Week 8 Leeming Science Week

There were a number of activities on offer during Leeming Science Week for students to do to get involved in STEM.

Mr Sabapathy ran two flight simulator sessions during recess and lunch. This was an opportunity for students to ‘fly’ the Cessna from Jandakot to Serpentine and see the suburb with a birds-eye view through the simulators.

Year 7 students spent a lesson exploring robotics and Virtual Reality. Budding engineers built structures with Strawbees and had an opportunity to get involved in electronics.

Leeming Science Week was also an opportunity to display some of the brilliant STEM project work completed by Year 7 and Year 9 students under the guidance of their Science teachers as part of our Science programs of study.

Ms E. Janes, Science HoLA

Term 3 Challenge

The school theme for National Science Week in 2022 was Glass: More than meets the eye. It is based on the UN International Year of Glass. It celebrates the many roles that glass plays in our lives, from phone screens to optical fibre to glassware in labs, plus investigating glass as a part of our sustainable future.

The Term 3 challenge was to create the most realistic breakaway glass, in terms of its clarity and strength. This challenge requires a lot of skill and patience to complete at the highest standard. It has been very interesting to see the results of this challenge! Congratulations to Xavier A., Albie E., Zara S. and Lexi C. who made the clearest glass, and Dylan A. who made the most “shatterable” glass.

Murdoch Soil Sciences Program

This term, Year 9 STA Science classes completed a soil science program, facilitated by the Murdoch Outreach team. The program took place over three weeks, and comprised of six lessons. In the first session students collected soil samples from the gardens around the school, and then completed a series of tests on the samples; from water content, acidity, composition and factors affecting the soil.

The students then presented their completed project during Leeming Science Week in Week 8. Congratulations to Azka H., Hector F., Yang N. and William R. for taking out the 1st place prize with a fantastic poster and presentation to match. 2nd place went to Lachlan B., Juheon H., Kamron Y. and Thilina K., with other awards for poster design, and presentation going to Brodie W., Dylan L., Riyo P., Nicky B. and Pei Shan K.

Year 8 Japanese Specialist Program Incursion: Character Obento チャラ弁

On Wednesday 31 August, the Year 8 Japanese Specialist students participated in a “Character Obento:チャラ弁” incursion. Students were immersed in the Japanese language with Ryoko, our native Japanese teacher, teaching the students about the important aspect of Japanese culture: the art of packing a lunch box. The Japanese Specialist class also created their own nutritious yet visually appealing lunch box by using a variety of Japanese ingredients and presentation techniques. An ‘oishii’ lunch was eaten by all students at the end of the lesson!

Expression of Interest: Host Family 2023

On Tuesday 30 August we sent a connect message to all our families asking for expressions of interest.

In 2023 we will have Natsuko O. as a Japanese Assistant.

Becoming a host family:

• Host families must provide meals, a separate bedroom and a fun-loving, family environment.
• Becoming a host family is a rewarding experience for yourself and your family. Host families often say that hosting is “like going on a holiday” because it gets everyone out of the house seeing and doing things in Perth they don’t normally do.
• Travelling with a family can be expensive and challenging so why not do it in reverse and have the country come to you instead?
• Japanese Assistants are keen to share their culture with you and often bring across traditional toys, crafts, snacks and sometimes cooking skills to give you a taste of what life is like for them.
• Experience a little bit of Japan in Australia!

Expressions of Interest Close on Friday 23 September.

For more information about the program, contact Joanne Sgro (Japanese Specialist Coordinator): joanne.sgro@education.wa.edu.au

Ms J. Sgro, Japanese Specialist Teacher

French Club

Preparation during French Club of the French video for the Multicultural Festival 2022.

During Term 2 and 3, students have been working on recreating a song from a famous French group called Big Flo and Oli. The song title was "Bienvenue chez moi", and it talks about all the French cities and their specialities in France, Belgium, French Islands, and Corsica. We were extremely lucky to have had the help of Monsieur Angus, from the Media Department, to be able to turn all our work into a video to showcase during the Multicultural Festival on Friday 19 August 2022. We all had lots of fun, learnt lots of new words and facts about French culture.

Multicultural Day

All French students who participated in the French Club prepared some French specialities to share on Multicultural Day. We did a Ratatouille, which is a mediterranean side dish, made with a mix of vegetables, tomato sauce and herbs. We also cooked an onion soup and for dessert we had a typical French snack: Du pain et du chocolat. Thanks to Maison Saint Honore (French patisserie and bakery in the Swan Valley), we had about 40 French rustic baguettes that the students could try with the onion soup. The French dishes were very popular, needless to say, nothing was left at the end...neither, ratatouille nor onion soup nor baguettes and chocolate. Great effort from the French students to cook two kilos of ratatouille and one kilo of onion soup in one hour!

The students also organised some crafts and quiz activities on the day. We built a French flag, we built the Eiffel Tower, we made French macaron in playdough and we had lots of French quizzes made for each cohort of Years 7 to 10s, with the assistance of Madame Robert and Madame McLaughlin.

Merci to Monsieur Angus

Thank you to Monsieur Angus for all his help, support and time. The students prepared a French Thank you card, with some French specialities like Foie Gras and Petits Beurre biscuits.

Year 12s

Year 12 students had a live meeting with Monsieur William Goussanou, sophrologue in Paris. As part of their French curriculum in their Unit 4, le monde qui nous entoure, the students discovered a new type of methods and technics called Sophrologie, to relieve stress. Monsieur Goussanou was there to explain in detail the concept of Sophrologie in French. He then asked the students to sample one technic under his supervision. We are very lucky at Leeming Senior High School to have Monsieur Goussanou available to share his knowledge with our students.

Our Year 12s had a visit from their former Year 7-9 teacher Madame Carroll, who is now retired. It was lovely for them to see her, as well as sharing some French conversation. It was wonderful for her to see how great the students are doing before their WACE in November.

What a great time we had with the Year 12s in preparation of "R U OK Day" making French treats with a famous French lolly called : Carambar. They made some "financiers", a little cake made with almond meal. The recipe was entirely in French and it was great to see them interacting together and navigating though a French recipe and to see such a delicious result. C'était délicieux!

Year 11 Career and Enterprise students also participated in mock interviews with two Rotary representatives, one of whom was the first female tailor in the Australian Army and the other of whom had owned their own business and practised as a Financial Advisor, as well as having a discussion about their career pathways. This was an extremely rare opportunity to create a real life interview experience, with people who had not previously been met, where the outcome is constructive feedback, without the pressure of a real job opportunity relying on it. Feedback from the interviewers was about how articulate, polite and well presented our students were. Feedback from the students was of how much they enjoyed the process as well as finding it challenging. Hopefully it sets them up well for the future!