Students have been working on a heap of amazing mathematical activities to start the year. We have been working on developing growth mindsets with our students in Maths and challenging ourselves with inquiry and problem-solving tasks.

The photos show students working on a task to investigate square numbers.

Over the last few weeks in HaSS, Grade 7 classes have been learning key historical terminology and how to create timelines, both of past events and of our personal lives. Our focus has been on ensuring our timelines are correctly scaled and labelled.  

We have also been examining different sources of information and analysing the information to determine whether it is a primary or secondary source. This is to allow us to deepen our understanding and identify any potential bias in information sources moving forward.

Grade 7 English is off to a flying start with students launching into a fractured fairytale unit  about story structure, character and setting. It's awesome to listen to our students share their reading voices through some excellent and engaging read alouds and we are looking forward to reading their own creative stories later in the unit. Students are also engaging in some wonderful silent reading and we encourage all families to talk to their children about the Queechy At Home Reading Program which kicked off this term too! 

Year 7 Science

This term students have been developing their understanding of practical skills including completing experiments safely, measuring accurately, collecting reliable data, and analysing data.

Once again, Drama students have hit the ground running in 2023. Grade 7 students are learning about the basics of Drama. They are introduced to the concepts of Collaboration, Communication, Creativity and Confidence.

Grade 8 Drama students are learning about the history of theatre from Ancient Greek times to Shakespeare.

The amazing grade 9/10 class have been planning and performing. The following photo shows Zeus and the rest of Greek Gods and Fish Boy planning a road trip.

On Wednesday 15th March our student leaders from years 8-10 participated in a leadership workshop presented by Lauren from Taylor Made Change. Lauren presented our students information and activities focused on leadership, how to inspire growth within themselves and others as well as what a successful and strong team culture looks like. Students gained invaluable skills and knowledge they can utilize moving forward in their roles within the school as well as the wider community. Thank you to Lauren for volunteering her time to come and work with our student leaders! 

Throughout the beginning of Term 1, students across all grades have been participating in our Athletics unit in the lead up to the carnival that was held last week. This is something different compared to previous years, with Swimming and Athletics swapping places within the school calendar. In Health classes, students have been studying Mental Health (Grades 7, 9 & 10) and Safety (Grade 8), with these units continuing through to the end of term.

Now that the carnival has been run and won, students are moving onto their second unit of work in PE classes, with each grade focussing on the following:

Grade 7 – Target Games (Netball, Soccer & AFL)

Grade 8 – General Sports (Lacrosse, Hockey & Basketball)

Grade 9 – Inclusion & First Nations (Goalball & Wulijini)

Grade 10 – Inclusion & First Nations (Puldjungi & Seated Volleyball)

Take a look at the highlights of Goalball from the 2020 Paralympics below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYInsaojGA4

Farewell Roger

It is with some sadness that we say farewell to Roger Barnes, our renowned IT, Music and Volleyball teacher. Roger has won a position at Newstead College and will make the transition there later this term. Roger started his time at Queechy in 2012 and has created an extremely positive legacy in the proceeding years. Roger has made significant connections with both staff and students during his time at Queechy and will be sorely missed as he embarks on the next stage of his own learning journey. Roger is a passionate educator and regularly goes above and beyond in his efforts to support student learning both in class, and out. We all wish Roger the very best as he heads down the road to begin his new IT teaching role. I am sure many of our students will look forward to working with Roger once again when they enrol at Newstead College in the future!

NAPLAN

As parents may be aware, the annual NAPLAN data gathering is on this week and next. The move has been made Australia-wide to conduct NAPLAN earlier in the year. Our year 7 and 9 students are completing a number of assessments this week and next, all online, and all targeted to individual students. We gain an extremely important data set from their efforts and strongly encourage all parents to support your children to make a real effort during the testing.

A big thank you to Ann-Marie Harris who has been co-ordinating the whole NAPLAN process this year and to both our staff and students for engaging in the process in a very positive manner. We look forward to seeing the results later this year.

 Athletics Carnival

Great effort from all involved last week as we managed to miss the dodgy weather and run two uninterrupted days of Athletics. We had high participation rates and received very positive feedback from both staff and students. It was heartening to see many parents also attending and supporting their young ones, something we sorely missed during COVID.

Inter-high is coming up and many of our students will once again have an opportunity to represent the Q on a much bigger stage.

Well done to Hadyn Goss, the HPE team and all staff, both teaching and non-teaching, who helped make the days a success for our students.

Thank you also to all the students who attended and participated in such a positive way.