STRIVE FOR EXCELLENCE 2R Woolooware Road North Woolooware NSW 2230 Phone: 9523 6752 Fax: 9527 3412 Website: www.woolooware-h.schools.nsw.edu.au TERM 4 WEEK 3A 22 OCTOBER 2015 FROM THE SENIOR EXECUTIVE The HSC is well underway as I write this report. Our year 12 students continue to work hard studying and completing their exams. We wish our students and their families well during this time and into a bright future. I’d like to thank all the parents who have contacted the school or spoken with me personally about how happy they have been with the education and opportunities their children have been given here at Woolooware. Our new student leadership team has been elected. I am very pleased to announce the following: Captain: Deirdre Murray-Wallace Captain: Matthew Roussis Vice-Captain: Hannah Parkin Vice-Captain: Yibeltal Campbell SRC President: Amy Tilling SRC President: Liam Rees I must also congratulate our newest scholarship winner, Amy Tilling who was one of two students to win the Australia Indonesia Association Commonwealth Bank Scholarship, which will see Amy go to Indonesia for two weeks to further her studies in the language and culture. An outstanding achievement! FLOURISH Mentoring 2015 is underway! Congratulations to the 16 high achieving year 12 FLOURISH Mentoring students participating in this program. Community mentors will this week begin working with our students to further develop vital skills to support their success in the future. The launch last week was well represented and you could feel the anticipation and excitement of students when they first met their mentors. Thank you again, to parents and mentors for their support of this program. Finally, congratulations to Kaitlyn Ward, our Deadly Kids Doing Well Award recipient for 2015. Kaitlyn received this prestigious award at a ceremony at the University of Technology last week, for her commitment to her studies. We are all very proud of her achievement. MS SIOKOS PRINCIPAL Kaitlyn Ward 22/10/2015 Woolooware High School p. NEWS BOWS FOR BEAU In term 3 the Woolooware SRC did a small fundraiser to help support the Sydney Children’s Hospital and Mrs Hennessy’s little boy Beau, who underwent open heart surgery at 3 months old. It is pleasing to see Beau recovering very well at this stage. The students were able to raise $874 and also showed their support for Beau by wearing bow ties and bows in their hair. Everyone’s support was greatly appreciated MR MONAHAN TEACHER 22/10/2015 Woolooware High School p.2 NEWS TOP 10 TIPS FOR DEALING WITH EXAMINATION PRESSURE 1. KNOW YOUR MATERIAL morning, visualise yourself calmly walking into the The more confident you are about the topic (s) in your exam room, preparing your equipment, reviewing and exam, the less stress you will feel come exam time. completing your exam paper and feeling good about Stay on top of your school work and homework how you did. Learn more about this in the Managing throughout the term. Follow up with your teacher, or Stress unit of the Study Skills Handbook. another subject matter expert, if there are things you don’t understand, well before the exams! Trying to 7. INVOLVE YOUR PARENTS IN YOUR understand new concepts the night before the exam is SCHOOLWORK VERY stressful. Talk to your parents about what you are studying throughout the term. Show them your bookwork and 2. PRACTISE homework. The more your parents understand about Do practice papers if they are available, or practice what you are doing and how you are going, the better questions. This might include multiple choice, short they are able to manage their expectations. They may answer or essay style questions. Always study in the also be able to help you study by testing you on what way you will be tested. Work out a plan of action so you are learning. you know how long you are going to allocate to each question type, what question types you will start with 8. TALK TO YOUR PARENTS ABOUT and what you will do if you come across things you REALISTIC GOALS aren’t sure about. Learn more about this in the Active Keep talking to your parents about what you want to Studying unit of the Study Skills Handbook. See achieve, in individual subjects, at school overall and in Login details at the end of the article. other aspects of your life. Involve them in helping you to identify where to concentrate the most effort to 3. FUEL YOUR BODY AND YOUR MIND achieve your goals. See the Goal Setting unit of the In the days leading up to an exam, make sure you get Study Skills Handbook. enough sleep. Being tired makes it harder to concentrate and remember. Fuel your body and mind 9. UNDERSTAND EXPECTATIONS by eating well and drinking plenty of water. Learn Many students feel like they are not meeting their more about this in the Lifestyle and Balance unit of parents’ expectations. Often this is a result of poor the Study Skills Handbook. communication about expectations by both parties. Assessment and reporting systems also change over 4. MANAGE THE PHYSICAL SIGNS OF time and are different in different schools. When your STRESS parents really understand what your report means, they Familiarise yourself with how your body feels when can understand what you are actually achieving. Your you are stressed. Do you get headaches? Tension in school can help you explain these to your parents. your neck or shoulders? Does your heart race faster? Often students are achieving, but reporting structures What happens to your breathing? Whenever you feel may not clearly represent this to parents. these effects, quickly start some relaxation exercises. A good one to try during an exam is to breathe in 10. ASK FOR HELP deeply for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds and breathe The most important way to deal with stress is by talking out for 8 seconds. Do this a few times to calm down to people and asking for help. Don’t try and go it alone. and allow yourself to refocus. See Managing Stress Your school, teachers, parents and friends are your unit of the Study Skills Handbook. support structure so keep lines of communication open (that means talk to them!) and let everyone know how 5. BE PREPARED ON THE DAY you are feeling and what help you need. Pack, or prepare, everything you need for the exam day the night before. Have a plan for how you are You can learn more about how to deal with examination going to get to school on time - including a back-up pressure in the Managing Stress and Test-Taking plan if necessary. Eat a nutritious breakfast and make Techniques units at www.studyskillshandbook.com.au sure you are hydrated. See the Test-Taking by logging in with these details: Techniques unit of the Study Skills Handbook. Log in to our school MOODLE site Extreme 6. VISUALISE Learning… Study Skills Click the ‘Log In’ Use visualisation techniques to help reduce your image. stress on the day. Every day in the weeks prior to the MRS MAYNE exam, last thing at night and first thing in the LIBRARIAN 22/10/2015 Woolooware High School p.3 NEWS JUNIOR GIRLS OZTAG OPEN BOYS CRICKET th The Junior Girls Oztag team won the Division A The Open boys cricket side are through to the 4 premiership by defeating Port Hacking High School round of the Alan Davidson Shield. The boys scored a 2-1 in a close encounter. The entire team played hard fought win over Heathcote in the third round. well throughout the whole season and were Thomas Moss was the best of the bowlers taking 3/8 deserved winners. Naomi Duncan won the teams while Ryan Thomson (69) and Matthew Groat (71) best and fairest award. top scored with the bat. 22/10/2015 Woolooware High School p.4 NEWS Y10 INFORMATION & SOFTWARE TECH. PORT HACKING ZONE SPORTS The Port Hacking Zone Sports Presentation was held on Wednesday, 8 October at Gymea Tradies. NCSS CHALLENGE During term 3, year 10 Information and Software Woolooware students were presented their awards for Technology class participated in the National a number of Zone sporting events in 2015 including Computer Science School Challenge conducted by The Zone Age Champions for swimming, athletics and University of Sydney. cross country. Students completed two challenges per week for five We also presented Best & Fairest awards to students weeks, using the Python programming language. competing in our Thursday weekly grade sport competitions, whose teams won their respective All students received a participation certificate. competitions. The following students receiving higher levels. Once again, Woolooware had a large number of Amy Curmi and Petit Lau – Merit in the Beginners students receiving awards on the day, another challenge successful day in sport this year! Brandon Yip and Hunter Perry - High distinction in A full list of students and awards will be included in Beginners challenge. the Annual Sports Report which will be available at the Sports Assembly in November. Hunter Perry - Merit in the Intermediate challenge. MISS SMITH SPORTS ORGANISER MRS DAVIS TEACHER Ms Siokos with some of the students receiving Merits or High Distinctions 22/10/2015 Woolooware High School p.5 NEWS SRC TRIVIA NIGHT Our schools SRC hosted a trivia night in the school hall to help raise funds towards the Ride to Conquer Cancer. Almost 150 students and staff were in attendance and had a great time battling it out to be the champion team and win some prizes. The winning team won a pizza and a Flip Out party.