27 June 2019

Newsletter Articles

Principal’s Report

Hello Everyone,

As we are nearing the end of Term 2 it has been obvious that the staff at Taroona High School work incredibly hard for all students and their families. This is the time when reports, educational adjustments and many excursions and learning opportunities are organised and carried out.

I have been in awe of the range and scope of activities that I have seen while here. From sports, to field trips, to camps and competitions, the options and availability has been amazing. I recently had the pleasure of seeing the Grade 9/10 drama class rehearse and then perform their scenes to their peers. It was a wonderful opportunity for students to have explicit teaching, responding to feedback and having high expectations placed on them, which they rose to magnificently. Their peers and teachers also enthusiastically supported them and engaged with their work. It was a highlight for me in my time at Taroona High School.

Although we are only (nearly) half-way to the end of the year, the Grade 10 cohort is becoming increasingly aware that college is coming and their decisions in this regard are important for a successful transition into their next educational phase. The work and effort of their teachers and support staff has, again, been exemplary. Well done team!

Mr Bennell will return at the end of this term and I am sure he will be eager and excited to get back and share his new learning and experiences while in the USA. I want to thank the whole school community for welcoming me and giving me a fantastic experience while acting here for Term 2. I wish the students and staff the very best for the future and know that their efforts and endeavours auger well for future success.

All the best

Charles White
Acting Principal

School Health Nurses

Sleep Well! From Nurse Bec

I see many students who tell me they are tired and don’t sleep well.

The following tips might help:

Why? Sleep is important for our bodies and we need to make sleeping a priority. When we sleep our bodies repair, grow, learn, boost our immune system and improve our memory. It even helps us to support a healthy weight. Just like your phone, your mind needs to be recharged each day - with a good night sleep!

How much? 11 - 13 year olds need between 9 and 11 hours a night. 14 - 17 year olds need between 8 and 10 hours a night. It is, however, important to pay attention to individual needs, based on how rested you feel in the morning (National Sleep Foundation, sleep recommendations 2014).

Is this your sleep routine?

Not enough sleep? Sleep is just like money - not enough sleep and you go into sleep debt. People in sleep debt have concentration difficulties. They mentally ‘drift off’ in class, have a shortened attention span, memory impairment, poor decision-making ability, lack of enthusiasm, moodiness and aggression, depression, impulsivity, slower physical reflexes, clumsiness, poor sport performance, poor academic performance, increased absences from school and increased risk-taking behaviours. Long term sleep debt is linked to obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Stress hormone loop

Chronic sleep debt – the vicious circle. Cortisol is a hormone essential for life. It has many functions but can cause havoc to your sleep cycle. When you are stressed or afraid, your body produces more cortisol. This makes it harder to get to sleep and stay asleep. Poor sleep then keeps your cortisol levels high. High levels of cortisol then make it harder for you to sleep and can make you feel anxious and sad, triggering a vicious circle. Making sure you have good sleep habits to get regular sleep and finding ways to relax and manage stressful times in your life will help high cortisol levels return to normal levels with time.

What helps?

• Get outside during the day – this helps melatonin production (the hormone that helps you fall asleep).
• Exercise during the day will help you deal with stress and anxiety and will help your body burn up energy.
• Avoid long day-time sleeps, (20 – 30 minutes is okay). Avoid very late nights and long sleep-ins at the weekend (two hours extra is okay – more than this can affect your sleep routine).
• Finish homework, computer gaming and TV one hour before bedtime.
• Finish dinner at least two hours before bed. A heavy supper late on or close to bedtime is hard on your stomach.
• Do not have caffeinated drinks (including Coke) after 2.00pm.
• In the last hour before bed, your body is naturally getting ready to sleep with the release of melatonin. You are yawning, and your muscles are beginning to relax. Switch off the computer, the TV, the iPad, and don’t use your mobile phone. The light that comes from their screens can interfere with the production of melatonin and stop you falling asleep.
• Establish a routine in the lead-up to going to bed. Create ‘sleep associations’ that ‘cue’ your body to be tired. Healthy sleep associations might be having a bath or a shower, then reading a book, listening to gentle, relaxing music or a mindfulness podcast.
• Keep as close to a regular bedtime and waking up time as possible, as it helps to ‘set’ your body clock.
• In the morning, open your curtains or turn on a light. A flood of light in the morning helps to switch off your melatonin and wake you up in readiness for a new day!

Don’t be discouraged if this doesn’t work straight away! It takes time to establish new habits. Research shows it takes around 60 repeats for a new pattern to become habit. Perseverance is the key!

Career Insights - Further Education Information for Grade 9 and 10 Students

Parents are often discussing future pathways with their children. The Career Insights Newsletter focuses on different career, course and labour market topics each month.

Another site you may like to look at with your child is myfuture.edu.au. This site has career profile quizzes, further education sites, courses and career information. It is a valuable site for families to use as it is current and Australian. All Year 9 and 10 students should do the career quizzes and follow up with the support information that is provided. Hopefully these two resources can add value to the conversations happening with students.

New Caledonia Visit to Taroona High School 2020

Can you host a New Caledonian student for 12 days?

Taroona High School will again be welcoming students from Francis Carco Secondary School in Dumbéa, New Caledonia from 25 February to 7 March 2020. This will be their third visit to our school. The students will participate in our curriculum each morning and will spend the afternoons visiting our many attractions and becoming familiar with our culture.

Another trip is planned for Taroona High students in September 2020 and we will be visiting their school next year, so this makes a good link with our closest French-speaking neighbours in the Pacific. The students are French speakers but have been learning English at school for three years. They will be about 13 or 14 years of age, equivalent to our Grade 8 age, although they are currently in the equivalent of Grade 9 at their school.

There are at this stage, 23 students visiting with their teachers. We need host families for the students, who will require two meals a day (breakfast and dinner) and at least one day with families over the weekend. They will also need transport to and from Taroona High. It will be possible for them to catch the bus with your own child if you are not able to bring them yourself. If you can accommodate two students, this would be ideal, but not essential.

A Working with Vulnerable People Registration card will be required. Applications can be made through the following link:

If you would like to give these students a taste of Australian culture, please fill out the form below and hand it to the office or directly to me (Jillian Lynch). Alternatively, you can send your details to jillian.lynch@education.tas.gov.au

2019 Taroona High School Scholarship Program

The SRC has established a scholarship program for any Taroona High students wishing to pursue their interests and talents between July 2019 and July 2020. Our program has been sponsored by Taroona High School alumni, local politicians, businesses and the Taroona High School Association. Any student can apply for a scholarship of up to $500 in one of the following areas:

• Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
• Creative Writing
• Visual Art, Dance and Drama
• Debating and Public Speaking
• Health and Physical Education (sport)

The student must be participating in a competition, program or receiving tutoring or lessons. The recipient will have to provide a 200-word report at the conclusion of their scholarship, highlighting how they have spent the grant. More information and application forms can be collected from student services or accessed on the link below.

Kate Poynter
Grade 10 SRC President

Maths Pathway

We congratulate the Grade 8s on how they are embracing the Maths Pathway program this year. Maths Pathway provides us with the opportunity to provide each student with their own personalised program, allowing them to work on the concepts they are ready to learn next.

On average, so far this year, 75% of the Grade 8 students are achieving more than 100% growth. With some students above 300%!

We will be introducing some friendly competition between classes to help motivate students to maintain, or possibly improve on, this fabulous effort. Remember, we are focussing on how much each student can grow in their mathematical understanding, rather than where each student is academically.

Congratulations to Indigo, White and Teal for showing the most growth so far. Below are averages for the whole class for the whole year.

Music News

Grade 9 Intermediate Band Camp 2019

On Sunday 26 May, a class of very excited musicians got ready for a musical opportunity of a lifetime. The Grade 9 Intermediate Concert Band arrived at Orana at 3:00pm, enthusiastic for the three-day adventure ahead. We dropped our bags off into our rooms alongside our friends, unpacked the van and then set up for a whole band rehearsal. We played and practiced until 5:30pm, had a break for a delicious dinner until 6:30pm and then continued playing until 8:00pm. There were leaders picked in each section who prepared and notated what their section needed to work on in each piece, which they would then go through with their tutors in sectionals the next day. After a great band rehearsal, we retired to our rooms, exhausted, but ready for the next day.

The next day we had a relaxing breakfast and got ready for our sectionals. Each instrument in the band was in a different location around the camp site and had a different tutor to help go over our pieces and improve on our technique, to get ready for the concert that would be hosted at the end of band camp the next day. Each tutor is specialised in playing their individual instrument and have gone very far in their music careers - some even being part of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. All of us feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to be taught by them. They taught us very valuable skills that we will take on for the rest of our musical journey and use to help us in our future performances such as eisteddfods, Spring Arts Festival and so on. We had four sessions of sectionals, broken up by a morning tea, afternoon tea and lunch break. In total, we spent five hours playing our instruments. We then had the rest of the day to relax and hang out with our friends. We had an enjoyable dinner, and an after-dinner activity of Twister that most students were involved in. We then retreated to our bedrooms, worn out from the day.

The next morning, we again enjoyed our breakfast and had the same schedule as the previous day, except with whole band rehearsals instead of sectionals. After our five hours of practicing we ended with a traditional band camp barbecue for dinner, thanks to our lovely chef, and got ready for our end of band camp performance. Family and friends turned up to support us and were very impressed by how much we had improved. We played five songs: The Legend of Billy Miner, Shadow Dancer, Queen of Soul, Under the Sea, and Africa. After the concert, we said our final goodbyes, helped pack-up, and left to go home. Luckily our first class the next day was Music, so we could see all our friends again.

At each band camp, students, with the help of the teachers and tutors, work very hard to get the maximum learning out of the experience. Band camp enables students to learn a whole school terms worth of technique in just three days. It has a major positive impact on each student’s playing and reminds us how fulfilling and amazing it is to play a musical instrument and that all the hard work we put in pays off.

Not only do we learn and improve a lot from band camp, but we also have A LOT of fun. It’s a time for us to improve our playing and also to bond with our fellow class members and come together as a band, as this is when the best music is made. Grade 9 Band Camp was an amazing experience that we will always remember and it will always hold a special place in our musical hearts. We’re all looking forward to next year!

On behalf of the band we’d like to mention a big thank you to all the tutors, the chef, Mrs Harvey,

Ms Willing, Mrs Morris and Mrs O’Donnell for making this wonderful experience happen and all the hard work and support they have put in (and continue to) for our classes musical journey. We might not say it a lot but thank you, we really appreciate it.

Dharma (9A) and Emma (9B)

Grade 7 Extension Band Weekend

Long weekends are for playing, right? Well the Grade 7 Extension Band did just that on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. They played all day Saturday in tutorials, working really hard with their specialist tutors and blowing off steam on the soccer pitch in the breaks. They were amply fed by our chef Steve and went home tired but happy, only to return the next day for another full day of band rehearsals. Five of the six pieces came together and at 4.00pm the parents gathered for a concert of these pieces, followed by a barbecue for all. The weather was beautiful, the participants amazing and a big thanks to Ms Willing, who gave up her weekend to help. All praise to the students involved, who are now playing better than ever.

Jane Harvey
Music Teacher

Climate Leaders Education Outreach Project

A group of Taroona High School Climate Leaders has begun its education outreach project with the Primary School, working with a group of Year 3 and 4 students to introduce them to the citizen science program, Climate Watch. Clara (10A), Mackenna (9A) and Liana (9G) explained what climate change is, the effect it is having on our local environment and how the students can help in the fight towards climate action. The students learned that by becoming citizen scientists, they are able to contribute to a national dataset that is guiding climate scientists in their research.

The Climate Watch app has students follow a trail on a regular basis, making observations about the flora and fauna they see on the way. The observations emphasise events that occur due to changing seasons, as this is an aspect of climate change that will have an effect on our local species. The primary school students were very enthusiastic citizens of science and Clara, Mackenna and Liana did an excellent job of explaining the importance of their job to the students. We look forward to going back to the primary school to walk the trail again as the weather gets warmer, making our observations along the way.

Alyce Lamprecht
Teacher

Cross-country Carnivals 2019

The Taroona High School cross-country was held on Friday 24 May. It was a great day with many fantastic individual achievements and lots of house spirit. Below are the top three finishers for each grade. Angus (8O) gave us an exciting highlight for the day, breaking the Grade 8 Boys’ record by 19 seconds.

The Inter-High cross-country, held on 5 June at Rokeby, was another very successful carnival for Taroona High School. Initially it was thought we had won all three shields for the day; however, due to an administrative error we later found out we had lost the boys’ shield by a single point to New Town High School. The girls’ team won their team shield by a convincing margin and overall Taroona High School won the combined shield by over 200 points. All of the Taroona competitors ran well on the day, with some very exciting individual performances, including Emily (8Y) winning the Grade 8 girls’ race and Julia (10T) achieving the same in the Grade 10 race. Well done to all who competed on the day and represented Taroona High School so well.

Student Achievement

Laura (8W) and Josh (8W) has been selected to represent Tasmania in the U14s team at the Interstate Water Polo Championships, to be held at the Aquatic Centre in Hobart from Saturday 6 - Friday 12 July 2019.

Solly (10W) has been selected to represent Taroona High School and compete in the Mountain Bike Australia 2019 MTBA Schools National Championships on the Gold Coast on 2 August 2019.

Two students have been successful in the What Matters? Tasmania 2019 Writing Competition. 
Beowulf (8Y) – Years 7-8 Category Highly Commended 
Miwa (9G) – Years 9-10 Category Highly Commended. 
Given the number of entries this is certainly an outstanding achievement.

Michael (9O) has been selected in the Tasmanian 15 and Under Men's Volleyball Team that will compete in the School Sport Australia Australian Volleyball Championships in Adelaide from 17 - 23 August.

Lachlan (9O), Noah (9B), Jacob (9B) and Cesi (9J) have been chosen to attend an important training and talent identification camp at A-League Club, Sydney FC from 1 - 5 July, 2019 as part of South Hobart Football Club's talented player development program.

Communication with Parents/Carers

THS has a number of ways for parents/carers to keep informed of what is happening around the school during the year. Please take a moment to read and subscribe to the following options.

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Coming Events