NAPLAN

Our Year 7 and 9 students are currently working through the 2022 NAPLAN assessments. I have been extremely impressed with the efforts of students and staff this year. The data that we receive from NAPLAN is an extremely useful tool to the school. It is used in conjunction with other data sets to give us a clear picture of how well our school improvement strategies are working, identifies gaps in our student learning and helps guide future decisions about our school. It is important for students to attend all of the NAPLAN sessions to create the strongest picture of how we are tracking.

Attendance

As we move through our COVID experience and begin to regain some level of normality it is appropriate that we once again focus on student attendance as a critical element of student success. Whilst we are keen that students do not turn up to school when unwell we must work harder to ensure every student is at school for every other day of the year.

At the moment our attendance rate has dipped well below our pre-COVID data. Our biggest increase has been in the number of unexplained absences. We request that families make us aware as soon as possible as to the reason why your child is not at school.

This is doubly important as it may also alert us to concerns your child has about being at school. We need to know as much about our students as possible in order to tailor support to them to ensure success.

It is a legal requirement that young people are engaged in education until they are at least 18. Schools are the best place for this learning to occur.

Please contact myself, Grade AST’s or any of our Assistant Principals if you are having trouble getting your child to school for any reason.

COVID close contacts

You may have seen in our communications or through other media that there has been a recent change to the rules around close contacts. If you have a case of COVID in your family your children can still continue to attend school provided they are not testing positive to COVID and they have no symptoms. We do request that they are tested using a RAT before they come to school each day. Please contact the school office if you need to have extra RAT’s to allow this testing to occur.

Cross Country

Our school cross-country will be held on Monday 16^th of May. This is a normal school day and is, as always, a compulsory attendance day. We have a challenging course set up here at Queechy that can either be run or walked by our students. I encourage students to have a change of clothes and wear house colours for this event. Parents are welcome and there will be a viewing area for you on the day.

Allan Warren

Allan Warren was successful in winning a new teaching position in Melbourne during the school holidays. Allan has been a long-term member of the Queechy Staff and had a lead role in our work experience and school-based apprenticeship areas among other roles in his time with us.

I wish Allan well as he starts this new phase of his career.

Allan has been replaced by a teacher new to Australia, Jasmine Wall-Reid, an experienced educator from the UK.

Allan’s student career work has been picked up by Scott Bent, (Work placement Coordinator) and Darren Crawford, (School Based Apprenticeships). They will now be our key contacts for parents or businesses making enquiries about these areas.

This term year 7s have been studying chemistry. They have completed theory and practiced several separating techniques including, chromatography, filtration, distillation and evaporation techniques. Soon they will be working on their biology unit, where Landcare will come into the school and running a citizen science workshop to teach the students about wildlife and their habitats.

In Term One, 9 HaSS students examined the changes that occurred in Britain because of the Industrial Revolution. They began by looking at inventions of the Agricultural Revolution and created posters on chosen inventors. Their next focus was on the growth of cities, due to the loss of agricultural jobs and the invention of new machinery. Students identified inventions that were revolutionary and wrote PEEL paragraphs on them, practising both literacy and history skills.

The final focus was an eye-opener for our young ones, as they explored the lives of children, younger than themselves who toiled in mines, factories, and horrible jobs such as chimney-sweeping. This study gave them a greater appreciation of how comparatively fortunate they are today.

To assess their knowledge and research skills, students were given the summative task of creating a front page of a newspaper from Industrial Revolution times. This tested their ability to present events accurate for a given context.

Below are some samples of this work by Dominik and Will 9A.

The start of Term two sees the beginning of the Northern High Schools Sporting Association roster. These rosters provide students with the opportunity to play different sports against other schools in the North of the state. It aims to provide sporting opportunities for all students as they look to develop their skills.

This year at Queechy High School we have 3 mixed soccer teams, 4 boys football teams, 2 girls football teams and 7 netball teams participating in these rosters across all four grades.  Students are currently training hard ready for the season ahead which begins next week. We wish all of our teams the best for the upcoming season.

It’s been 10 years since Queechy first competed at the F1 in Schools National  Final in Canberra. Next week, Igen will be represented by Finlay and Eric, Queechy High School at the 2022 National final, but unfortunately it will be a virtual participation only. Although Oliver, James, Finlay and Eric will see the 200mm model F1 race car compete in Melbourne, they will be presenting the other components of the competition from Queechy High School.

Via a series of teams meeting Igen will present their trade display, engineering, and enterprise portfolios to a panel of judges located in Melbourne, while their miniature race car will be launched down the 20m race in just over 1 second to see who will represent Australia at the next world final.

Queechy drama students have been working hard to produce a number of performances for the Launceston Drama Competitions. Unfortunately, due to covid restrictions they were not able to perform on stage at the Princess Theatre.

This term, classes are learning lines and getting ready to perform whole class scripts. The scripts being studied are, the dilemma of Deidre Dearheart, Four Funerals and a Wedding, Coldark Castle and Frankenstein. All of these plays will be presented to audiences later in the year.

At lunch times students are welcome to come and spend time in the Art room. They do not have to be currently enrolled in an Art course, This is just an opportunity to be creative or explore an aspect of Art they are interested in.

Will has made himself a ceramic money box in the style of an ‘Among Us’ character. He attended the Art room across several lunch breaks, working with clay. Then he glazed the clay in the colours of his choosing. He put in a dedicated effort to achieve this result - well done Will!

The Smith Family have a strong connection to Queechy High School and it’s students.

In Grade 8 we have been fortunate to be involved in the “Future Seekers” Program which is designed to engage young people in future pathways.

Every Grade 8 student has attended 6 sessions, run over 6 weeks with each session focussing on some of the following areas:

• 6Cs that future employers look for
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Personally identifying strengths within the “soft” skills
• Developing and conducting “Mock” Interviews

We thank the Smith Family and particularly the quality presenters that delivered such a valuable program to our young people.

We also look forward to the “speed careering” day coming up early in week 3.

The Annual General Meeting for our School Association will be held on Wednesday 25^th May 2022 at 7pm in Room C30. Nominations are open to all School Association Members, with all parents of students enrolled at Queechy High School eligible for office barer positions and committee member positions.

We welcome all our staff and students back for Term 2, with special mention to our new families and to our year 10 students as they begin preparations to assist with their transition into further education and the next steps of their learning and careers paths. It is important for the School Association to have new members join to ensure the Association continues and nourishes the invaluable link between our parent body and wider school community.

Being a part of your child’s education and being involved in the School Association is very rewarding. The tasks associated with joining the Association are not onerous and allow valuable insights into the ongoing improvements school wide. The time commitment is minimal, approximately 3 hours per term.

Please see the school office for a nomination form or contact us via queechy.sa@gmail.com for a nomination form or for any further information.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Sonia Peck

School Association Chair