Welcome. It is a joy to be writing the first Senior School Newsletter article of 2021, at the beginning of this new term. Schools have sometimes been likened to large oil tankers insofar as there is an immense amount of work and planning required to get them up and running smoothly and once they’re in the open water operating at full speed, careful and ongoing work of many hands is required to maintain, monitor and steer their course. So it is always a joy to see the reward for so much hard work that happens over the Christmas break when students return and ‘normal’ school life returns to the building.
It was wonderful to hold our first Senior School assembly last Monday morning, to welcome the students back on site, and to start the year off together, as a community. During the assembly, I encouraged students to set personal goals for the term and the year ahead and also to ‘be their own pilots’. I plan to unpack more of this idea in a future newsletter.
This week, our Year 7’s are all on camp, forming new relationships and challenging themselves with a range of outdoor activities in a safe and supported environment. A number of Year 11’s are attending Arts Camp and I’m looking forward to seeing the inspirational works that they are completing when I visit in the coming days.
Next week sees the first House event of the year, the Senior School Swimming Carnival. The Carnival takes place on Wednesday 17 February, and then in the following week we have Year 7 immunisations and an external team will be coming into school (Friday 26 February) to provide some tips and strategies on Study Skills for our Year 11 students.
Its great to see the richness and diversity of these types of events returning to the Senior School and with our two completely renewed laboratories already being put to good use, the launch of our brand new ‘Co-Curricular Hub’ and things like da Vinci Decathlon, competitive sporting events and ArtsFest all waiting in the wings, it’s shaping up to be a great term and an exciting year ahead.
New Beginnings for Science in 2021 at TIGS
Over the Christmas break, we have been lucky enough to have the downstairs Science laboratories completely refreshed and renovated. The Year 12 Chemistry students have already christened the new lab carrying out an experiment in which they tested the pH of a range of substances using natural Indicators. We are also beginning with a new course offering for our Year 11 students, Investigating Science. The course is also relatively new to NESA and is touted as a preparatory course for Extension Science in Year 12. It is, however, very flexible in that it can cater to students of all ability levels. The flying toilet paper in the photos shows some of our Year 11 students learning about observations and inferences while studying the Bernoulli Effect.
