Queechy Alliance Links

The Queechy Alliance of schools, Ravenswood, Waverley, St Leonards, Norwood, Punchbowl, East Launceston and Queechy are continuing their strong history of collaboration. Our schools work closely together to ensure the best possible transition from primary to high school.

This week saw all our enrolling year 6 students attend the Queechy campus for Science Week activities. Queechy Alliance primary schools came to us in pairs for an opportunity for students to work with both new staff and students from another school. The engaging activities were conducted in both our science department and one of our foods areas.

Students had an opportunity to be practicing scientists, experimenting with both fermentation and cooking processes. The best part was they were able to eat their experiments!

A big thank you to all our Queechy Alliance schools for supporting these opportunities for our future Queechy students. I was extremely impressed with the Queechy team who organised and ran the days including Sam Ayre and Suzie Maddy, Year 10 students and our very supportive Lab Techs and Kitchen Assistant.

We look forward to our upcoming parent information sessions and full day taster later in the year.

Tamar Tales: another Queechy Alliance initiative, will be happening at Newstead College shortly. Teams of budding writers from across the Alliance will meet for a full day at Newstead to craft a “book in a day”. These events are always challenging but very rewarding for students involved. The teams work together to design a book based on a brief they will be given. Writing, editing and illustrating are all important parts of this engaging challenge. Keep an eye out in the newsletter for updates after the event.

We had the pleasure of hosting the Secretary of the DoE, Tim Bullard and Director of Learning, Trudy Pearce last week. They came to find out more about the Packages of Learning – Community Services pilot we are running in Year 9 and 10. Tim and Trudy spoke to Brayden, Kane and Rae to find out more about the program and how the students are benefitting from it. They also took the opportunity to listen to feedback from the students about how they might be able to improve the Department of Education to help all students in Tasmania. A big thank you to Tim and Trudy for your visit.

This year for Science Week we have been hosting our feeder primary school Year 6 students to participate in some amazing food-based Science! This year’s theme for Science Week is “Food: Different by Design” and we have been exploring the chemistry of baking and fermenting foods. Our Year 10 students have been helping out, supporting, and mentoring the Year 6 students to help their transition into Year 7 at Queechy next year. A huge thanks needs to go to Maryanne, Stewart, Janine, and Suzie who have worked tirelessly preparing and running the activities for the students.

10A and 10F have started looking at Global Population as part of their Human Wellbeing Unit. Did you know there are over 7 Billion people on our planet? It would take you 200 years to count from 0 to 7 Billion out loud (National Geographic).

Want to find out more? Watch this clip…https://youtu.be/sc4HxPxNrZ0

On Thursday the 12th of August, a group of four Queechy Students consisting of Sam, Wayde, Stella and Ruby were invited to judge entries for the Collaboration/Innovation day at HR+. HR+ is a not-for-profit association that recruit doctors, nurses and allied health professionals in Tasmania and are also an NDIS provider.

There were five groups who each had their own unique ideas for how they could help the community.  

The Bee Happy group blew us away with their idea. In short, they wanted to start off small, doing up community gardens that are self-sufficient, while also being able to make things and sell them to put back into the gardens. 

Here is some of our own thoughts: 

Sam

The presentations were great, and they all had great ideas. I enjoyed going to HR+ and am very thankful that I got chosen to judge. 

Stella

It was a great opportunity to experience new workplace skills and meet new people. 

Ruby

It was a very enjoyable experience. Feeling like you share a part in the future of the state is something exciting. 

Wayde

I enjoyed the opportunity given to us and I hope that what we voted for works well. 

Thank you to the CEO Peter Barns and all the staff at HR+ for the invitation and opportunity to be involved. We all enjoyed the experience, and we hope that Queechy is invited again next year to participate. 

Written by Wayde

The judgung panel with Peter Barns from HR+

Getting ready to judge the presentations 

Do you have an interest in Japanese pop-culture like Manga or Anime?

Then you can now vibe with other people with similar interests, read and share Manga and Anime. It’s a great chance to meet new people and completely geek out on what you’re interested in. This group is open to everyone and we encourage you to come along.

This club will be held at 1:30pm lunchtime on a Friday in the Library.
For more information, ask Crystal, Tiara or Mrs Mills.

Throughout Term 3 Mr Tepper’s Tier 2 Boys Life Skills class have been working through a unit of work learning how to cook quick and easy meals that can be cooked at home. We started the term off with a planning lesson, coming up with ideas of what to cook and what ingredients would be required and then each Monday during block one we have been cooking up the different meals. The boys have learnt some invaluable life skills and have been a pleasure to teach.

On Tuesday 10^th August, the year 10 students had their celebration morning tea, where students received awards for either letter of commendation, academic achievement or academic excellence.

Letter of commendation awards are awarded to students whose reports reflected highly in their work habits (effort, attitude and organisation). Academic Achievement awards are awarded to students with 11 points and Academic Excellence awards are awarded to students who have received 12 or more points across their 5 core subjects (Maths, English, Science, HaSS & Health and Physical Education).

The Scoring system is as follows:

A = 3 points

B = 2 points

C = 1 point

Well done to all students who received awards – Mr Luke Tepper & Mr Dan Ritchie

Last week in 9/10 Beauty therapy we talked about all things exfoliation. Exfoliation is the process of rubbing our skin with a brush or a granular ‘scrub’ in order to remove dead skin, revealing fresh, bright skin. We usually do this before moisturising or shaving.

The class had a chance to make their own ‘Coconut Sugar’ body scrub. We made our own branded labels as well. Armed with our own scrubs we learnt the art of hand massage, giving our partners a relaxing hand pamper- it was a lovely treat in the middle of our day.

Want to make your own body scrub? Here is our recipe…

Coconut + Sugar Body Scrub

By Meg Yonson

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar.
• 1/3 cup coconut oil.
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, lemon or orange zest (optional)

Directions

1. If your coconut oil isn’t soft, place into a bowl and heat in the microwave for 10 seconds, until it’s just soft, not runny.
   
   2. Add sugar in with coconut oil and stir using a spoon. Add in a dash of vanilla, lemon or orange zest if you want it to be even tastier.
   
   3. Scoop into a glass jar with a sealable lead and keep in your bathroom.
   
   To use: Wet your skin and rub in small circular motion to exfoliate skin. Wash off with warm water.

Students have been working on investigating the life stories on many people. One task recently completed by students, was a diary entry written from the perspective of Anne Frank. Below is one completed by Mirabella from 7F.

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