From the Middle School

From our Head of Middle School

As we head toward the mid- term break I am pleased to report that both Year 7 and 8 students are continuing to impress us with their ongoing commitment to their studies online. The efforts of many students were recognised and celebrated by their teachers during assemblies and via emails of congratulations and printable certificates sent out by the Curriculum Office. There are too many to name, but well done to all and thank you to parents for all of your support on the home front. 

I also wanted to shout out to Oldina Xia and Zoe Banks of Year 7,  both of whom have joined us at Pymble this term and to congratulate the girls on so successfully navigating entry to the college whilst off campus. Welcome to the Xia and Banks families, we are delighted you have joined our Middle School community. Over the last week we have brought the girls back together within their Term 2 Camp groups in order to provide time to reconnect. On Tuesday Year 7 whole heartedly embraced the opportunity: 

Earlier this week, we looked back with our Year 7 girls at the learnings and memories they had taken away from the Outdoor Education Program last term. It was a lovely opportunity for our students to reconnect with their camp groups, as they took part in a quiz afternoon competing against each other to see how much they could recall about skills learnt, places they had visited and key learnings from their time at Vision Valley. Thank you to Georgie Cain and Nick Wilkesmann from our Outdoor Education team for MCing our quiz afternoon and coming up with an exciting and challenging set of questions.  Ms Lombard Head of Year 7  

Congratulations to Years 7 and 8 Ingleholme House who have finished on top of the score board after two weeks of Middle School Olympic challenges. Our Ingleholme students will be rewarded with a pizza party when safe to do so on our return to campus. For their final challenge, students were asked to identify their favourite moment at the Tokyo Olympics. Phoebe P in Year 8 writes: “My favourite part was when Australian Skateboarder Kieran Woolley hit a cameraman by accident in his run, and made sure that he was ok. I liked this because it is such good sportsmanship.’ What a fabulous inspiration our Olympians have been over the past two weeks! 

It was great to see the Year 12 Middle School Liaison Prefects at Year group assemblies this week prior to the Trials. They were keen to say hi and share tips for staying fit and well during lockdown. Growing relationships with older mentors is so important. This week we are launching another opportunity to build connections between Years 7 and 11 students: The Big Sister program. Please encourage your daughters to apply for this voluntary initiative to be paired with a Year 11 mentor. The purpose is to build social connections, offer support and guidance in their learning and school life, and/or to share a common interest or hobby. We hope time spent together during free time across the day, will foster connectedness across the College. 

Congratulations to Madeleine Watson and the other Year 8 Middle School Leaders who have been actively facilitating a number of initiatives to keep the girls connected in fun and exciting ways. Their latest challenge, the MS Writing Competition, is outlined below. Please encourage your daughters to take part. 

MS Writing Competition 

The Middle School Leaders are excited to announce that we are launching a new initiative that aims to bring Year 7 and 8 together and maintain our Pymble community whilst we are learning online. During lockdown, we will be running weekly challenges that cover a range of areas such as writing, sport, art, baking and more. This week, we have introduced the Middle School Writing Competition: students are invited to write a narrative, poem or illustrate a comic that responds to a given quote – more information on this can be found on the Year 7 and 8 Teams channels and the portal. We encourage as many girls to engage in our weekly challenges as possible! 

Write a Book in a Day

Congratulations to the Write a Book in a Day team members. Please enjoy the student reflection below. 

Year 7  

Year 8  

This Wednesday (4 August) 11 other students from Year 8 and I worked together to create a book including illustrations and full chapters to donate to children suffering from cancer. Leading up to this event there was lots of planning, fundraising, and organising to ensure the event would run smoothly online. On the day we started at 8am and finished at 6pm. At the beginning of the day, we were given guidelines and parameters, the parameters included random words, primary characters, settings, and an issue of which we had to follow whilst creating our plot. We decided to write our story about an upcoming baker who is trying to cook for her large family Christmas dinner at her new restaurant, however one of her main ingredients is missing and unavailable in her isolated town. But with time running out she needs to complete a test from an anonymous source to retrieve the ingredients and seeks help from an old friend to do so. However, with her integrity at risk, if she doesn’t win who will she be disappointing? Throughout the day, we all worked extremely hard to digitalize sketches, improving chapters, adjusting the plot, etc. We are all so proud to have worked together to create this story and definitely developed new skills we will use in the future. We were extremely happy with our final outcome and hope that the children at the hospital will enjoy reading our story!  Sabrina Cooke Year 8 

Directions Week 5

In Directions classes this week our Year 7 students are continuing to explore the power of storytelling by appropriating and modernising a children’s book with new perspectives and messages for their younger peers. In one class, for example, students are examining the tale of The Rainbow Fish by looking at how the story can be re-told to encourage young people to share their riches (the beauty of the Rainbow fish’s scales) but whilst not having to give up what makes them unique in order to fit in. They are questioning, for instance, why the fish has to give up all of it’s scales in order to be accepted. Students are using their strengths to work together to write, design and illustrate a final product that can be shared with Prep and Junior School students. We are looking forward to seeing their final products in a few weeks’ time. 

 In Directions this week, Year 8 students have focused on the Five Ways to Wellbeing by participating in activities that suit their needs and interests. They had over 50 activities to choose from and teachers encouraged students to engage in a wide variety of activities. A healthy mind is just as important as a healthy body for overall wellbeing. Like physical fitness, students can strengthen their psychological health in lots of small day-to-day ways. This will help students feel happier as well as help them to cope with stress. 

Religion and Ethics in Year 8  

This year our Year 8 cohort moved to weekly lessons of Religion and Ethics. This essentially meant we now had double the number of lessons compared to previous years! Consequently, this year students have developed a broader exploration of the theme of Social Justice, extending their knowledge beyond individual responses towards injustice to communal ones. Victoria Marsh in Year 8 reflected on her experiences in Religion and Ethics this year so far, stating; “as a cohort, have finally crossed the halfway mark of our last year in Middle School and there is no doubt that the past semester in Religion and Ethics has been a wonderful and engaging experience. Studying different religions and how they approach the theme of Social Justice has opened my mind. It has also extended my creativity as I engaged in Project Based Learning to explore the achievements and contributions of the suffragette Kate Sheppherd. Furthermore, I worked collaboratively with my peers to undertake research to deliver a group project which answers the question; “How are different religions working together to take action against climate change?” Religion and Ethics has allowed us to delve deeper into the major religions of the world and my teacher has consistently encouraged me to take the opportunity to be curious and question things, as well as to deepen my understanding of living in a world where religion remains relevant to society and culture”. 

Essential Workers

Mrs Jenny O’Donnell

Head of Middle School

A friendly reminder from our Healthcare Team

If your daughter has a Critical or Medical Alert plan, these need to be updated every 12 months with your GP and forwarded to the College. This includes, but is not limited to, medical plans for asthma, anaphylaxis and allergies. We appreciate the challenges of organising a consult with a GP during lockdown, but please know that you can also arrange a telehealth appointment to have your daughter’s plan updated. It is vital that we have a copy of the plan in Healthcare so we are aware of how to manage your daughter’s condition if an incident occurs on campus, or when she attends an excursion or camp. Before any camps or excursions, you are asked to fill in a permission form and a medical form. Please remember that students are not permitted to attend camps or excursions until these forms are completed. Please contact healthcarecentre@pymblelc.nsw.edu.au if you have questions regarding these plans. We are more than happy to help.