Newsletter Edition 16, 2019

Newsletter

ST GEORGE’S ANGLICAN GRAMMAR SCHOOL

Edition Sixteen 08 November 2019

Peoples Choice Award Winner St Georges’s Art Show - 2019 Eva Williams

St George’s Anglican Grammar School; an exciting, innovative co-educational secondary school based in a high-rise building in the Perth CBD. The School caters for local and international students in Years 7-12, and is a proud member of the Anglican Schools Commission network of schools in Western Australia.

We are committed to child safety and protection, and expect all staff, volunteers, visitors to the School and contractors to respect and abide by all policies, procedures and practices developed and put in place by the Anglican Schools Commission (ASC) and/or the School in this regard.

Contents From the Principal ......................................................................................................... 1 From the Curriculum Coordinator ........................................................................... 2 From the Head of Pastoral .......................................................................................... 4 From the Science and Mathematics Department ................................................... 6 From the Health and Physical Education Department .......................................... 8 From the IT Manager .................................................................................................... 9 School News .................................................................................................................. 10

From the Principal Mr Gary Racey

Following a fairly extensive entry in the last newsletter, I have determined to give readers a bit of a reprieve this time around. A few things to note below.

Strategic Plan Launch After further consideration, the planned 2020-2025 Strategic Plan Launch has been postponed until Term 1 2020. This is to tie in the launch with the opening of the new lease spaces (Ground floor and CQU), as well unveiling the new café refurbishment to parents and guests. Additionally, the new cladding will be finished and hence the building looking at its very best to celebrate the beginning of a new academic year.

3rd Stream of Year 10 2020 As eluded to in the last newsletter, interest in the School is at an all time high, with waitlists in Years 8-10 in 2020 and only one space available in Year 7 (there is always availability in Years 11 and 12).

Hence, it has been decided to open a 3rd class of Year 10’s in 2020. A separate communication was emailed to families this week explaining this decision and highlighting the positives for our existing community. As mentioned in that communication, we encourage existing community members to inform their families and friends of the limited spaces that are now available, before they disappear!

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Staffing On behalf of the School, I would like to congratulate Mrs Angela Tanham on being offered a consulting position at the Catholic Education Office of WA, beginning next year.

Mrs Tanham’s passion, organisation and commitment will be a loss to our school, but we wish her well and hope she enjoys her new role. The School has started the advertising process for a new Head of Curriculum to begin in January 2020.

Congratulations to Ms Wohlnik on being selected as the winner of the Perth West Elm Christmas Window Competition. The project is a national competition with six finalists selected to decorate a shop window each across the country. All six go into the final selections, with one window voted the overall winner. Ms Wohlnik was selected for the Perth store in the Hay Street Mall.

The concept takes on a Christian theme of Peace & Goodwill, with a mass of peace doves in a kinetic mobile/sculpture constructed mainly from discarded paper and suspended on mass from above. Please take the time to have a look after installation, which occurs on 22 November.

Student success A shout out to Elijah Sparrow (Year 10) for his performance in the Augusta Adventure Race recently. Elijah placed second in the Under 18’s and 30th out of all male competitors. See the HPE report for more details, but congratulations to Elijah on this supreme effort.

Blessings to all.

Gary Racey Principal

St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

From the Curriculum Coordinator Mrs Angela Tanham

End of Year Exams Both the Year 10 and 11 students are approaching their final exams for 2019. Exams give students an opportunity to demonstrate their skills and to discover what they know and what they don’t know and to isolate the areas that need improvement.

lead to anxiety and depression.

Students should be maximising the time in class with their teachers and ask them questions such as “what topics are being tested?” and “what is the structure of the exam?”. Students should have commenced their revision programs as good preparation, well in advance of the examination period, will alleviate many of the stresses associated with exams.

BODY: Put your health first and eat healthily, exercise regularly and get enough sleep. We all know what to do, but we need to make the decision to prioritise our own wellbeing. Without the right fuel you will feel exhausted and depleted and it is very hard to be positive when you aren’t feeling your best.

The following tips for exam preparation come from Dr Prue Salter from Enhanced Learning Educational Services.

How to stay positive as exams approach It can be difficult to stay positive or “be up” as exams approach. The more important we perceive the exam to be, the more stress we can feel. While feeling some stress can be positive and help us get motivated to study, we all have a tipping point. When our stress levels reach our personal tipping point, this higher level of stress can lead to inaction, where we avoid doing the work necessary to be prepared and as a result feel even more overwhelmed.

If not dealt with, the stress can build and 2

The key to being positive and managing negative emotions such as anxiety and feeling down and depressed in any pressure situation including exams is to “fuel up”. It goes without saying that if we are exhausted, tired, stressed, depressed etc. it is very difficult if not impossible to deal with the pressure of exams. “Fuelling Up” is about boosting wellbeing factors in your life. You need to boost the wellbeing factors in your BODY, MIND and EMOTIONS.

MIND: To think more positively, challenge your perceptions. Write down your top 5 fears and worries. What’s the worst thing that can happen? How valid are these fears?

Usually fears and worries are not based on reality but on imagined scenarios that have little to no evidence. If it’s something that can’t be changed bring acceptance to it, but if it can be changed, take action.

EMOTIONS: To help yourself feel more positive every day think of 3 good things that happened that day and how they made you feel. Also take the focus off yourself and do 3 simple but deliberate acts of kindness every day. It might be a kind word, a compliment, helping someone or surprising someone with a kind act. You will be amazed St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

at how making other people feel better lifts your mood as well.

Year 10 Students Please be aware of the following significant dates for all Year 10 students: Date Event 25 November Year 10 Exams Commence 27 November Year 10 Exams Conclude 4 – 6 December Year 10 Camp 9 December Year 7 - 11 Presentation Evening 11 December Final Day Term 4 Year 7 – 11.

Day concludes at 3.30pm.

It is an expectation that all students attend school camp. Students who do not attend camp will not be accommodated at school with an alternate program.

Angela Tanham Curriculum Coordinator

3 Edition 16 2019

From the Head of Pastoral Mr Hilton Hardman

7 Things Every Parent with an Anxious Child Should Try Anxiety in schools is nothing new, but in recent years it has been on the rise, impacting many students. While reading up on anxiety I found an article by Renee Jain who designs Anxiety Relief Programs for students.

What I took away from this article was that while there is no one-size-fits-all solution for anxiety, there are a plethora of great research-based techniques that can help manage it, many of which are simple to learn.

Renee created an anxiety relief program for kids called GoZen. Here are seven ideas straight from GoZen that parents of anxious children can try right away: 1. Stop Reassuring Your Child During periods of anxiety, there is a rapid dump of chemicals and mental transitions executed in your body for survival. One by-product is that the prefrontal cortex or more logical part of the brain gets put on hold while the more automated emotional brain takes over. In other words, it is really hard for your child to think clearly, use logic or even remember how to complete basic tasks. What should you do instead of trying to rationalise the worry away? Try something I call the FEEL method:

with your child. Deep breathing can help reverse the nervous system response.

Empathise - anxiety is scary. Your child wants to know that you get it.

Evaluate - once your child is calm, it’s time to figure out possible solutions.

Let Go - Let go of your guilt; you are an amazing parent giving your child the tools to manage their worry.

2. Highlight Why Worrying is Good Remember, anxiety is tough enough without a child believing that something is wrong with me. Many kids even develop anxiety about having anxiety. Teach your kids that worrying does have a purpose.

Worry is a protection mechanism. Worry rings an alarm in our system and helps us survive danger. Teach your kids that worry is perfectly normal, it can help protect us, and everyone experiences it from time to time.

Sometimes our system sets off false alarms, but this type of worry (anxiety) can be put in check with some simple techniques.

Freeze - pause and take some deep breaths

3. Teach Your Child to Be a Thought Detective The best remedy for distorted thinking is not positive thinking; it’s accurate thinking.

Try a method we call the 3Cs: Catch your thoughts: Imagine every thought you have floats above your head in a bubble (like what you see in comic strips). Now, catch one of the worried thoughts like “No one at school likes me.”

Collect evidence: Next, collect evidence to support or negate this thought. Teach your child not to make judgments about what to worry about based only on feelings. Feelings

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St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

are not facts. (Supporting evidence: “I had a hard time finding someone to sit with at lunch yesterday.” Negating evidence: “Sherry and I do homework together--she’s a friend of mine.”

Challenge your thoughts: The best (and most entertaining) way to do this is to teach your children to have a debate within themselves.

4. Allow Them to Worry As you know, telling your children not to worry won’t prevent them from doing so. If your children could shove their feelings away, they would. But allowing your children to worry openly, in limited doses, can be helpful. Create a daily ritual called “Worry Time” that lasts 10 to 15 minutes. During this ritual encourage your children to release all their worries in writing. You can make the activity fun by decorating a worry box.

During worry time there are no rules on what constitutes a valid worry anything goes.

When the time is up, close the box and say good-bye to the worries for the day.

5. Help Them Go from What If to What Is You may not know this, but humans are capable of time travel. Mentally we spend a lot of time in the future. For someone experiencing anxiety, this type of mental time travel can exacerbate the worry. A typical time traveller asks what-if questions: “What if I can’t open my locker and I miss class?”

“What if Suzy doesn’t talk to me today?”

Research shows that coming back to the present can help alleviate this tendency. One effective method of doing this is to practice mindfulness exercises. Mindfulness brings a child from what if to what is. To do this, help your child focus on their breath for a few minutes.

6. Avoid Avoiding Everything that Causes Anxiety Do your children want to avoid social events, dogs, school, planes or any situation that causes anxiety? As a parent, do you help them do so? Of course! This is natural. The flight part of the flight-fight response urges your children to escape the threatening situation. Unfortunately, in the long run, avoidance makes anxiety worse.

Try a method called laddering. Kids who can manage their worry break it down into manageable chunks. Laddering uses this chunking concept and gradual exposure to reach a goal.

Let’s say your child is afraid of sitting on the swings in the park. Instead of avoiding this activity, create mini-goals to get closer to the bigger goal (e.g. go to the edge of the park, then walk into the park, go to the swings, and, finally, get on a swing).You can use each step until the exposure becomes too easy; that’s when you know it’s time to move to the next rung on the ladder.

7. Help Them Work Through a Checklist Why not create a checklist, so they have a step-by-step method to calm down? What do you want them to do when they first feel anxiety coming on? If breathing helps them, then the first step is to pause and breathe.

Next, they can evaluate the situation. In the end, you can create a hard copy checklist for your child to refer to when they feel anxious.

Hilton Hardman Head of Pastoral

5 Edition 16 2019

From the Mathematics and Science Department Ms Charlotte Donovan

STEM Event for Year 7 – 9 students at Scitech Inspire in 5 is a free event for students in Years 7-9 and registrations are now open. Join us to hear several short presentations from women working in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths fields.You will have the opportunity to learn how rewarding a career in STEM can be! There are 2 event evenings to choose from: Monday 11 and Tuesday 19 November. Learn more and register online at www.innovatorsteaparty. org Adventure World – Year 11 Physics On Thursday 26 September, the second last day of term 3, Ms Valentine, Ms Scheele and the Year11 Physics students hopped on a bus with Mr Cook and the girls from Mercedes College. We all had our bathers on, sunscreen, of course, towels in our bags and headed out for a day of fun and excitement at Adventure World. We all took part of the traditional start of the summer season when Adventure World opens its gates for Physics Day. Many other Year11 physics students from various schools around the Perth Metropolitan area were there; ready to partake in all the fun this landmark of the southern suburbs has to offer.

St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

This event was an opportunity for the Year 11 Physics students to experience first hand the features of motion from the course of study we had just completed.

There were several water slides, including the iconic Kraken, which is the largest cone-shaped ride in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a thrilling experience as it takes up to four people at a time on a floating device through the tunnel of flowing water. It culminates in a very cold pool , which ensures an extremely swift exit!!

This day was a fantastic experience for enriching relationships fostered with the students of Mercedes College. It was great to have so many Physics teachers and their students all together in one location enjoying the lighter side of an academically rigorous course.

Present on the day were also representatives of Curtin University and Murdoch University providing information about courses on offer at the tertiary level.

Some other companies that provide technical support in delivery of the Physics course were there to showcase how they can enrich the experience for both teachers and students alike.

STEM in Schools – Year 10 Science St George’s was invited to participate in the nationwide STEM in Schools event on Wednesday 30 October. Mr Patrick Gorman MP, and Dr Thomas Poulet from CSIRO came and spent an hour with our 6

students, talking about their personal STEM pathway, resulting with one pathway leading to Politics and the other to Data Processing on a Global scale. Our students were challenged with a Global Challenge, and asked to ideate, prototype and present their solution, abandoning any constraints of 2019 technology and ‘old thinking’. The students were inspired by their guest speakers and passionate about their solutions, further solidifying the relevance of STEM both at school and in future studies.

DNA Detective – Year 10 Science The Year 10’s came into the Lab on Thursday to find out a murder had been committed!

Luckily the students had been researching DNA, how to read DNA profiles and justify claims, as it became their task to determine who had committed the crime. Working both collaboratively and individually, students processed evidence, debated the findings and postulated their ideas. The truth will be revealed in due course!

Charlotte Donovan Head of Mathematics and Science

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St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

From the Physical Education Department Ms Jodie Scheele

Our talented St George’s students continue to shine out there in the community. Elijah Sparrow,Year 10, is an exceptional Physical Education student who is self-directed in his own physical wellbeing. This year, Elijah has achieved Champion Boy in Swimming, Cross Country and Runner-up Champion Boy in Athletics.

His versatility in both the water and land has enabled Elijah to apply all his physical capabilities in last weekend’s Augusta Adventure Race. Elijah placed an incredible second place in the Under 18s and placing 30th out of all male competitors. He completed a 1km ocean swim, 6.5 trail run, 15km mountain bike ride and 7 km paddle.

Congratulations to Elijah and his family on this amazing result.

It was very pleasing seeing the interest in our Co-Curricular Archery Program which is taking place on Mondays at Riley Oval, at UWA. We are under the expert guidance of Mary, who runs Archery-2-Go. Thank you to all students and families for getting involved and I look forward to seeing our Archers develop their shooting skills over the next 5 weeks.

Jodie Scheele Head of Health and Physical Education

From the IT Manager Mr Jason Wakefield

BYOD 2020 I am hoping to implement a more standardised BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program this year for 2020, that involves one web portal for all your BYOD needs including accessories, bags, extra warranty cover etc. This will not be compulsory, parents are free to choose the notebook device for their child as long as it meets our minimum or, preferably, recommended specifications found here.

However, we hope that this program can alleviate the questions and stress around purchasing a BYO device as well as reducing the time it takes to search for a device or the support turn-around if and when the device has a fault.

TIPS OF THE WEEK - Security Tips from Cyber Security Experts Credit to source website here Use a strong, unique password for every website.Yes, that means you’ll have to install and use a password manager.

Keep all applications up-to-date with the latest patches, and use a less-targeted browser such as Chrome or Firefox.

instance, it doesn’t quite make sense for a weather app to demand access to your photos, does it? Or a flashlight app requesting permissions to your telephone/ SMS? Think twice before clicking on links found in emails, especially if you don’t know the sender.

You are a security layer.

Many kinds of threats rely on social engineering, psychologically manipulating a victim into doing something which will enable the attacker to achieve his aims.

Many more useful security tips in the link above or click here The IT department recycles your household batteries. Please use this FREE facility to dispose of all your expired batteries (not including car and phone batteries). The bin can be found in the IT Manager’s office on level 1.

More info here.

Let’s reduce landfill together!

If you have missed any of our IT articles this year, I encourage you to have a read of them here as they may contain information that could help you out in your everyday life with technology.

One such article covered information regarding a home internet safety product from Mobile devices are an open gate to our Disney. More information privacy, secrets, and money (mobile banking). here: https://cybersafehouse. com Be very careful what apps you choose to install and pay special attention to what permissions each app is requesting. For

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St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

School News Student Term Dates - 2020 Term 1 30 January - 9 April New Student Orientation 29 January Students Mid Term Break, Friday 28 February Term 2 30 April - 3 July Students Mid Term Break, Friday 29 May Term 3 27 July - 25 September New Student Orientation 24 July Students Mid Term Break, Friday 21 August Term 4 13 October - 9 December Enrolments The School Enrolment Policy requires one full term’s notice in writing prior to the withdrawal of a student from the School.

Where such notice is not received, the School will charge an amount equal to the tuition fees for that current term.

To avoid fees in lieu being charged, notice of a student’s withdrawal must be received by the School before the first day of the School Term preceding the Term of the student’s departure. If this does not occur, families will be charged the remainder of the current Term, plus an additional Terms fee in lieu.

Upon withdrawal of a student from the School, all fees and charges incurred for that student are payable to the School in full within seven days of exit.

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If the account has been paid in full and a refund is due, payment will be processed for the full refund due within seven days of exit.

SEQTA The St George’s Anglican Grammar School SEQTA account is not assigned to a staff member and, therefore, is not monitored.

Please contact the staff member directly to ensure prompt action to your message.

Uniform Shop Matrix Uniforms will be taking appointments for fittings starting from December. Appointments can be made by calling 6148-5000 or sales@matrixuniforms. com.au The Matrix showroom, 1 Hassler Road, Osborne Park will be open until 19 December at 4.00 pm and will reopen on the 6 January 2020.

Any online orders that are placed during the holidays will be delivered to the school on Tuesday 28 January 2020.

We will also open on a Saturday in January, the week before school starts, on 1 February 2020 from 9.00 am – 12.30 pm for the working community that can’t visit the showroom any other time.

The Science Department needs your help!

Donations of any old working fish tank accessories will be gratefully received to fit out our 2 new fish tanks. We are seeking the following: • Gravel; • Lights; St George’s Anglican Grammar School Newsletter

• Filter and Air pumps; • Decorations (Plastic plants etc); and • Large sheets of acrylic or polystyrene.

Also, any ice cream containers (any size, with or without lids) will also be accepted.

Students can bring their donations in directly to the Science department or their Science teacher.

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