South Sydney High School 2023 Term 2 Week 4

GRIT Personified

Congratulations to all students who were recognised at the Achievement Assemblies last week. This is an important part of the learning culture at SSHS, to recognise student achievement

Wonderful to see so many happy students.

Attendance Heroes- Joel and Dexter

Wearing the uniform with style - Lucy and Sophie

Big Picture

Our Big Picture journey continues with a student meeting starting next week to explain the exciting new curriculum model to present Year 8 students. Year 9 Students and Staff presently in the Big Picture Academy at South Sydney High School will share information and their experiences. Positions will be limited and students and parents will be required to apply for a place. The Parent Information Night will be held later in the term.

Stay tuned for further details.

Talented Artists working with Forrest

Forrest was the subject for a Visual Arts lesson this week. Some great work was produced.

Regards

Janice Neilsen

Positive Behaviour Winners for the last three weeks

Congratulations to:

Samera, Olivia, Dominik pictured with Liz from our wonderful Student Office

Christian, Briana pictured with Nicole from our wonderful Student Office

Tayne

Upcoming Events

Athletics Carnival - 25/5/23

Year 10 Assessment period -Week 5 22/5/23 - 25/5/23

Year 8 Check-in Assessment period - Week 5 22/5/23

Year 7 Assessment period -Week 6 29/5/23 - 2/6/23

Year 9 Assessment period -Week 6 29/5/23 - 2/6/23

As our Semester 1 Assessments commence, it is a timely reminder to all students to follow the Illness/Misadventure procedures if required.

School Development Day Term 2

All schools in NSW were asked to devote School Development Day Term 2 to focus on Aboriginal Education. Our Aboriginal Education Team partnered with Kevin Heath, an Outreach Worker in NSW Health, who put together an engaging and informative program for our staff.

We will share more information and photos from the day in future newsletters.

Here is some feedback from staff.

All speakers and facilitators were excellent and provided us with a truly enriching experience in sharing their life's journey and how they have achieved great success in their lives.

Many thanks again Kevin to you and all your team.

What a great day today! One of the best Staff Development days ever.

Check-in assessment -Year 8

Dear parents and carers,

During Term 2, students will participate in two Check-in assessment tests in:

• numeracy – Monday 22nd May period 4

• reading - tba (week 6 or 7)

Students have been asked to bring headphones or earbuds that plug into a computer to enable them to hear audio during the assessment. All students can borrow headphones on the day.

The Check-in assessment is a NSW Department of Education online literacy and numeracy assessment available to support schools to assess and monitor student learning. Students with disability may receive the same level of support during the assessment they would normally receive in the classroom.

Please contact me if you have any queries

Kind Regards

Cathy Walton

catherine.walton@det.nsw.edu.au

Deputy Principal

Go Foundation

On Thursday, 4th of May our 5 ‘GO Foundation’ scholarship recipients took part in an amazing cultural experience at the University of Sydney.

They had a smoking ceremony followed by talks with Adam Goodes, Michael O’Loughlin and Greg Inglis. They then took part in activities such as Aboriginal art and Dance.

These scholarships are for aspirational Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students that have good attendance, try their best and have aspirations to achieve educationally

Congratulations to Leah, Ava, Kyleigha Jayquin and Zac

Aboriginal Co-ordinator

Jenny Wilson

Maths Update

Mathematics Workshop at Plumpton High School

Wednesday 10th May was an exciting day for our Year 8 and 9 enrichment students who participated in a Maths Workshop featuring a school competition and a mixed competition. Titled ‘Problems, Patterns, Pictures, Puzzles’, this was an event with over 150 students which challenged their abstract thinking, spatial reasoning as well as teamwork. Congratulations to Douglas in Year 9 for achieving first place in both competitions. We are thrilled to share some recounts of the day by year 8.

The workshop was very organised and everything had a hands on explanation that had visuals and more hands on concepts to them. The staff were amazing and really understood how some students learn differently from others, producing a very helpful and encouraging environment.

Overall, it was an awesome experience and I would do it again.

Marley C.

The Inquisitive Minds workshop was a fun and educational experience, as well as a helpful resource. The workshop was well organised and put together, with prizes to be won. Questions were clever, and required logical thinking, whilst working with a team, which built collaboration and teamwork skills. Staff were great, and super friendly, encouraging you along the way.

Zoe. B

TAS News

TAS FACULTY is celebrating the NEW refurbished commercial kitchen J3 in the J Block. Though the kitchen still needs a few final touches with equipment and storage, practical lessons have been modified to cater for this. This week year 10 FTE2 where able to have their first practical experience in the commercial environment. These students made Ricotta Gnocchi & Protein Balls, see attached images of their accomplishments.

Year 12 Hospitality class have had a couple of lessons in the new kitchen, the young chefs focus this week’s practical was Hot Appetisers – making Samosas, Spring Rolls and Sweet Chilli Pork Balls. See attached images of their accomplishments.

TAS staff are greatly appreciative and deeply thankful for the new refurbishment of J3 kitchen. Our gratitude and thanks go out to South Sydney High School, The Department of Education and the P& C body for their support in making this happen.

The much fun and valued learning experiences happening down here in the J block.

Mrs M Stephenson

TAS/VET-Hospitality Teacher

VET News

An exciting couple of weeks for Year 11 Hospitality as they had their first workplacement industry experience in the area of Hospitality, specific to the field of Food & Beverage. Year 11 went out in weeks 2 and 4 and successfully completed the mandatory hours for their year 11 component of work hours. A massive shout out to the five students that where offered part time jobs as a result of their amazing efforts and positive attitude to work. A big congratulations to the 3 that accepted their job offers, this includes Georgie, Riley and Chika. The following images are the year 11 students out at their various venues.

Workplacement is a mandatory component for VET courses which is an essential requirement for both HSC and TAFE certificate. Students over the next 2 years will be completing 12 services periods and a minimum of 70 hours of industry workplacement experience. Year 11 will complete their second workplacement in term 4.

Much excitement and valued learning experiences happening down here in the J block.

Mrs M Stephenson

VET - Hospitality Teacher

TAS (Technology & Applied Studies) Teacher

Reach Out

ReachOut is a safe place where young people can openly express themselves, get a deeper understanding and perspective on what’s happening in their lives, connect with people who will provide judgement-free support, and build the resilience to manage their challenges now and in the future.

ReachOut is 100% online, anonymous and confidential, and lets young people connect on their terms. ReachOut offers a wide range of support options that allow young people to engage in the ways they want to, when they want to.

ReachOut also have fantastic resources for parents who would like support with common issues relating to raising teenagers. In addition to the self-help content available, they also offer free and confidential one-to-one support with a professional family and parenting coach at a time that’s convenient for you.

https://au.reachout.com/

Empowering Women

At the end of Term 1, 27 girls in year 10 attended the ‘Empowering Our Young Women Program’, which was hosted at the offices of Macquarie Telecom. What I took from this program was that it can be difficult at times as a female in the work force during your career, and you may not always anticipate the end result, however you should never give up. I spoke to women who had been in my shoes and had achieved great success. I learnt, and I strongly suspect that my peers also learnt the value of taking every opportunity that comes your way. We also learnt to pursue a growth mindset, to be kind, and to show empathy and gratitude. A quote that stuck with me from the day is that “you don’t follow your passion; your passion follows you”. This takes away the pressure to know exactly what you want your future career to be, as unintentionally you create your own destiny. My peers and myself found this to be such a rewarding experience and couldn’t thank our school, Macquarie Telecom, T. Rowe Price and United Way enough for the privilege to attend such an inspirational event.

Jamie

SSHS Student Ambassador

High Potential and Gifted Education news

ICAS

Its now time to enrol for this year’s ICAS examinations that will be taking place over the coming months. Details below:

This link takes you to the ICAS website where parent can order the exams they would like their child to sit:

https://shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps

South Sydney parent portal code: WLP015

South Sydney’s major High Potential Gifted Education project for 2023 – 24, focus on high potential in the domain of creativity

The department of Education’s 2021 HPGE policy has been operating in public schools since 2021 and it is based around the philosophy of the great thinker in the field of gifted education, Françoys Gagné. Gagné believed that if the right conditions occurred for an individual they would be capable of turning their aptitude or potential into achievement. He felt that the role of schools was to offer the conditions that would allow students to develop their abilities in the domains of natural ability: Intellectual, Creative, Social, Perceptual as well as the physical domains of muscular and motor control.

Our student population at South Sydney HS possess a range of high abilities or potentialities and the programs we offer seek to ensure that we provide opportunities for students to develop their gifts and thrive. With this in mind we designed a Term 1 Project, ‘Scripting the Show’ which comprised a series of workshops with award winning playwright Donna Ablela. During these workshops students who had a special interest in creative writing were encouraged to develop characters, scenarios and plot outlines for our 2024 school production ‘Beach’. This production will employ some scenes from the play of the same name by playwright Timothy Daly as well as scenes that have been written by Donna Abela using the student-developed material from these workshops. We now have the finalised script and hope to read this with interested students and Donna Abela at a final workshop on Friday 26 May.

In Term 4 this production will go into the audition and rehearsal phase and our school community can look forward to enjoying the show in late February 2024. Gagne’s model is included below and it illustrates how a project like this can develop natural abilities into talents, thereby transforming student aptitude into giftedness.

SSEP 2023

Our year 5 students were delighted to embark on our annual SSEP program for students identified by their teachers as possessing high ability. Group bonding and getting to know one another were the focus of the first day of this program on Thursday 11 May. Assisted by our own year 9 and 10 mentors these students were enthusiastic participants in the many fun but challenging activities they completed on the day. ‘Effective Communication and our fragile world’ offered the focus for workshops undertaken by the group on Thursday 18 May. These students embraced the challenging learning tasks that they undertook during the day with the assistance of South Sydney mentors.