MISSING LINK
Term 4 2023
PRINCIPAL’S MESSAGE In this final Missing Link for the year, I want to congratulate the school on a wonderful year where we have finally begun to see the recovery from the hard COVID years and the returning of the culture and strength of Rooty Hill HS. Best wishes to the teachers who are leaving us this year and a great big thanks to them: Ms Lucas, Ms Selvakumaran, Ms Xuereb and Ms Haigh. Best wishes to Ebony Wicks our SSO for her new job with the Health department. She has done a lot for the school in her time with us. (There will be more so hold a space) Congratulations to Year 12 2023 on their HSC results and the many offers of early entry they received. They were a very special year as the photos and videos record. On 6 December we presented Year 10 with the RoSA certificates and then on 8 December we presented students in Years 7,8, and 9 with their final end of year reports. We were delighted that 158 parents and family members joined us for the presentations and, as we come to the end of this year, I would like to share my comments from the assemblies and wish all families a safe and happy holiday. Today I would like to congratulate you on completing this year and I would like to recognise the very large number of students whose academic work, efforts and contributions to the life of the school through sport, creative arts, school service and commitment to improvement are being recognised today. I would like to take a few minutes to talk about “doing school and doing it well”. Our school was recognised in November for the ways we work and for what we achieved in being “excelling” in the Department of Education’s external validation. This week we hosted visits from people, including a delegation of Japanese visitors, who spoke with students and staff about what we do to continue to be so successful. They wanted to know about our practices and our systems. We spoke to them about the importance of student agency - we expect students to be able to take responsibility for their own actions – as learners, school citizens and members of Team Rooty Hill. We expect students to understand and demonstrate the #PERSIST values and be able to answer Yes to the 7 questions, one for each value. To do this, we all need to develop ways of thinking, speaking and behaving that demonstrate we know how to “do school well”. I often speak about the routines of successful secondary students and report on research that says that secondary age students need about 500 routines each day to do Years 7-9 well and about 750 routines each day to do well in Years 10-12. If you think about each class you attend from when you arrive, power up your laptop, complete the Do Now, attempt each task (with different content, concepts and skills) and then check your work against the criteria, finish homework, complete assessment tasks, do a project and complete the required work, you can see how many routines