From the Upper School

This term in the Upper School, we begin to sharpen our focus on service to others with the launch of Year 9 Community Service and opportunities to support the Hornsby Women’s Shelter in Year 10. 

It has been heart-warming to see the large number of Year 9 students attending the Wednesday lunchtime service group in support of Days for Girls. We are producing record numbers of sanitary products to support this worthy cause. 

Another wonderful cause that the College supports is our annual Sony Camp. Sony Camp 2021 will be the tenth annual Sony Foundation Children’s Holiday Camp hosted by Year 11 students from both Pymble and Shore, with the assistance of our community. Sony Camp provides much-needed respite for the parents and siblings of children with a disability by delivering a fun-filled four-day residential camp for 25 children with special needs. The Camp relies on the generous donations of our school community. 

Are you able to help us with our Sony Camp fundraising event? We will be holding a bake sale on Saturday 22 May at the Ku-ring-gai Netball Courts in Turramurra. All funds raised will go towards the Pymble/Shore Sony Camp. Donations can include items such as whole cakes, cupcakes, slices, biscuits, toffees, crackles or any other specialties you might have! 

If you are able to assist, could you please complete this short google form https://tinyurl.com/KNABaking to allow us to anticipate donations. Many thanks for your support, every donation will make a difference. 

Leadership Review 

As part of our ongoing review of student leadership at Pymble, we are currently seeking feedback from students in Years 9 and 10 regarding our processes and structure. 

Your child will be invited to participate in a survey over the coming weeks. This is to ensure that every student has the opportunity to share their thoughts and have their voice heard. Our guiding principles around student leadership encompass the philosophy of service to our community. We aim to provide diverse opportunities across a range of areas to allow for the development of authentic leadership styles. 

Family Zone – Year 9 

Following consultation with students, staff and our IT Department, I have made the decision that we will not proceed with the mandatory installation of Family Zone software on Year 9 student devices. Instead, we will continue with our current safety and monitoring measures in alignment with older students. Year 9 students will have the option to install Family Zone as a method to self-regulate their usage of technology as they step towards greater independence. In a recent Year 9 Assembly, we had a rich forum style discussion about the balance between autonomy and responsibility online. I would encourage you to discuss the benefits of installing Family Zone with your daughter to help her make an informed decision about her choice to adopt it or not. 

From the Deputy Head of Upper School

Mrs Michelle Hunt

One of the greatest gifts you can give is your time. This week we look forward to launching the Community Service program. Our Year 9 students will be provided with a number of school organised community service activities, both onsite and offsite, throughout the rest of the year. Hours can be documented and used to achieve a certificate of recognition. Some options include: St Edmunds Athletics/Swimming Carnival, Easy Care Gardening, Exodus, Turra Tots, Aged Care and Kids on the Block. 

from the Heads of Year 9

Ms Dylan Beaumont and Mrs Karen Michie

Year 9 has been busy once again this week. They were all very excited to be doing NAPLAN for the last time. Starting this week, our Upper School Year 9 leaders will be running our weekly assembly. This week we launch the Year 9 Community Service program. Mrs Hunt will talk more about this in her column.  

Next week, Year 9 Drama students will be performing The Importance of Being Earnest. Congratulations to all the students involved both on stage and behind the scenes and a shout out to the Drama teachers for their tireless work in providing this experience for the students. 

As always, Year 9 students continue to amaze us with their achievements. Congratulations to  

• Stella Robertson on making the National Gymnastics team for 2021. 
• The Year 9 Theatresports team who placed second at the Improvisation Australia Theatresports Challenge, where they competed against eight schools. They performed four rounds of improvisation, including ‘slow-motion commentary’, ‘entries and exits’, ‘open scene’ and ‘pop-up storybook’. 

For the rest of Term 2, the focus in Directions for Year 9 is ‘My Future’. These lessons are part of the Careers Continuum and look at the following areas: 

• Know yourself – with a focus on self-awareness, working well with others, being a life-long learner, being adaptable and presenting yourself appropriately. 
• Know your world – with a focus on knowing what is possible, using technology and information effectively, understanding work, exploring the labour market and experiencing work. 
• Manage your future – finding and using opportunities to learn and explore, making informed decisions, planning and building your career, balancing work and life, embracing change.  

The students have access to the resource The Careers Department which has lots of fantastic resources about a range of different career options. We hope that this resource and the lessons this term encourage your daughter to think about her strengths and start thinking about the sorts of careers that might suit her best. 

From the Information Technology Department

Mrs Blythe Cassidy, Senior Digital Learning Leader

Following their ySafe Cyber Safety presentation on Friday 30 April, Year 9 participated in a Digital Wellbeing lesson during their Directions time. The students explored the privacy policies of some of their favourite apps – Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok, to increase their awareness of how their data is collected, stored and used by these companies.

“I have discovered that deleted items and items you shared on Instagram will be kept on there until you permanently deleted the account, but the information the others shared won’t be deleted forever.” 

– Yuki Wang

From the Heads of Year 10

Mr Michael Stern and Ms Cara Foley

On Tuesday, Year 10 had the opportunity to attend The Bell Shakespeare Company’s performance of Macbeth. This aligned with their Term 2 English study and was a wonderful opportunity to see one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies. 

Bell Shakespeare’s actors opened with a buzz with a fabulous account of the witches in Act 1 Scene 1. Watching Macbeth and Lady Macbeth evolve through the various stages of ambition and guilt brought the play alive, giving Year 10 a nuanced understanding of the play. This opportunity was arranged by the English Department who saw incredible value in this opportunity. 

Careers Profiling Interviews 

This week and continuing into next, Year 10 students are participating in Career Avenues interviews. This interview is the follow-up to the careers profiling tests that students completed in Term 1. One-on-one interviews with a Career Avenue counsellor provide students with an opportunity to read through their profiling report and help them to understand the summary information provided. We encourage all students to discuss the findings of their profiling report and their interview with parents and carers as this can prompt conversations about Year 11 and Year 12 subject choices as well as tertiary pathways. 

Jacaranda Awards 

Congratulations to the 16 Year 10 students who were presented with a Jacaranda Award during last week’s Assembly. Students who receive a Jacaranda Award are nominated by their Compass teachers for their participation and enthusiasm in Compass as well as upholding and displaying the College values. Well done to all.

From the Head of Learning Area – Science

Dr Kristie Spence

The Science Department is excited to be launching the Year 10 Personal Experimental Task aka the Year 10 Science PET Project. For this task students will experimentally investigate a question of interest to them at home. We invite you to get involved your daughter’s learning journey and enjoy a bit of scientific discovery yourself.

Students will be given 13 weeks to complete their experiment and write up a scientific report. This includes three weeks of school holidays, which might be a good time for students to conduct their experiment and collect results. The students will get some time in class to plan their experiment, analyse their results and write their report with guidance and feedback from their teacher, but they will carry out their actual experiment at home.

In the coming weeks students will devise a question of personal interest to them. We would encourage parents to brainstorm ideas with their daughter, to help generate some possible questions that are relevant to their lives. Their question could be related to an aspect of their favourite sport or a natural phenomenon they have noticed and wondered about. Ultimately, they will conduct an experiment to answer their question by changing one variable and measuring its effect on another variable. A key requirement of the task is that numerical data will need to be collected for both variables so that they can quantitatively determine how one variable is related to another.

Here are some examples:

• How does the intensity of light effect the rate of seedling germination?
• How does the bounce height of a basketball change as ball pressure is decreased?
• How does surface area of a falling object affect the time taken to drop one metre?

Key Dates

Mrs Melissa Boyd

Head of Upper School

From the USPG

Mrs Pilar De Andrés Varela and Mrs Susan Ma, Parent Group Leaders

We would like to wish all fantastic super mums a wonderful belated Mother’s Day.

We are halfway through Term 2 and have some great opportunities to catch up with other parents in your year group and also meet new ones:

Year 9: A quick reminder that tomorrow (Friday) is the Year 9 Parent Morning Coffee at Brick Lane Espresso in West Pymble shops from 8.00am.

Year 10: There will be a Year 10 Parent Coffee Catch-up on Thursday, May 27 at 9.00am at Brick Lane Espresso, Philip Mall, West Pymble.

Thank you so much Margot for organising it. We hope you can all make it.

Have a great weekend

Pilar and Susan