From the Upper School

A Message from Mrs Boyd, Head of Upper School

It was wonderful to see our athletes shine at the Athletics Carnival on Monday. It was a wonderful atmosphere with girls sharing their wins, laughing at the various costumes and enjoying the school spirit. We congratulate the girls for their participation on the day.

We would like to acknowledge four of our Upper School super swimmers. Ellie Beck, Hannah Morton, Bella Zhang and Grace Gerreyn have been selected for the 2021 NSW Sharks Squad. 

There is one opportunity each year to qualify for this squad and the swimmers have to come in the top eight places in a National Final and swim under the qualifying time. The girls achieved this on the Gold Coast in April at the National Age Swimming Championships. Their first Sharks Training Camp is in the July school holidays on the Central Coast. Well done, girls!  

 A Message from Ms Beaumont and Mrs Michie, Heads of Year 9

We could hear the collective sigh of relief last week when Year 9 finished their final NAPLAN exam in Week 4 and what a wonderful way to begin Week 5 with the Secondary School Athletics Carnival on Monday. As you can see from the photos, the weather was very kind and the girls enjoyed competing, cheering and hanging out with their friends. Congratulations to all Year 9 students for their enthusiastic participation.

The Year 9 Upper School leaders have been busy planning and running our Year Assemblies. Kara and Jiya organised last week’s Assembly and Catherine and Aashna get an opportunity to organise and run Assembly this week. This is great way for our leaders to develop their leadership skills and is much more enjoyable than hearing from Ms Beaumont and Mrs Michie each week!

Another Upper School leaders’ initiative is Fun Friday. Here are our Year 9 girls enjoying some fun in the Science courtyard:

This week in Directions, the focus moves from self-awareness to exploring our character strengths. If we are aware of our character strengths, we are better able to make decisions about things like subject choices. Following this we will look at how to present ourselves when applying for jobs, starting with constructing a CV. The students have access to an excellent resource in the Careers Department which has a plethora of information about all sorts of industries and careers.

A Message from Ms Foley and Mr Stern, Heads of Year 10

The Secondary School Athletics Carnival took place on campus on Monday. The sun was shining as the girls proudly represented their Houses across a range of events. It was wonderful to see students having a go and, most importantly, supporting their peers!

Arabella Hunt noted, “The Athletics Carnival is a great chance to catch up with girls in your House and support them when they race!”

Millie Ruscio added, “I really enjoy the atmosphere and spending time with friends while cheering each other on.”

Year 10 Co-curricular Drama/Filmmaking recently competed in the Regional Shakespeare Carnival, ‘Sport for Jove’. Annie Chen and Jacqueline Qin competed in Co-curricular Filmmaking and took out a remarkable first place!

A group of Years 10 and 11 students participated with performances being an ensemble scene, duologue and group devised piece. Co-curricular Drama also entered with a short film and in a first for Pymble, two out of our four entries won first place for their categories!

Annie and Jacqueline will go on to represent Pymble at the State Shakespeare Carnival at the Seymour Centre later this term.

A very exciting result for Drama and these wonderful Drama students.

With assessment tasks upon us, we want to emphasise the importance of effective time management. Please encourage your daughters to plan their study time through time specific portions. We encourage the girls to use ‘organisational Monday’ during Compass time to organise their week and suggest they explain their evolving workload with parents or guardians. An assessment task may feel overwhelming when first starting, however it can be much more accessible if it’s broken down to smaller chunks.

Key Dates

Mrs Melissa Boyd

Head of Upper School

Da Vinci Decathlon

Grace Ho and Georgia Bicego (Year 9), Hanna Cheung and Claudia Chan (Year 10)

Da Vinci Decathlon is a highly competitive national competition where a team of eight students from each school completes papers from ten different disciplines that reflect Leonardo da Vinci’s areas of expertise. There are three sessions, with ten subjects distributed throughout the full-day event. This year’s theme revolved around the concept of ‘Chance’. The Decathlon was held across two days with the teams from Years 7 to 8 competing on 4 May, and the teams from Years 8 to 11 the following day.

The NSW State round began with a flurry, as students worked their way through the Science, English, Ideation and Cartography papers for Session 1. In the last couple of years, this involved settling around a table in a massive hall, joined by dozens of students from other schools.  But this year the competition looked a bit different…

Pre-COVID-19, the Da Vinci Decathlon was held at Knox. However, this year, the Decathlon was run via Zoom.  As soon as the session started, the papers were released and had to be downloaded, printed, completed and uploaded! Despite the obvious logistical challenges, students enjoyed the variety of mediums they could choose to work with, including iPads and laptops.  A chaotic harmony resulted with students using digital devices and traditional materials to complete the papers.  The smooth-running of the online experience was largely due to the attentive support from Knox and our own IT staff, who sat with us for the duration of the Decathlon.

The papers contained their usual intellectual stimulation, such as the last question of the Science paper, which addressed the ethics and morality of the discipline. Recess was a welcome relief (special thanks to Mrs Tarrant for supplying chocolates and lollies to keep us going), although we couldn’t resist the urge to continue discussing the cartography paper-with a question reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet from Year 9!

Session 2 consisted of Code-Breaking, Engineering, Art and Poetry and Mathematics. Each team worked collaboratively, with experts on each team assigned to a specific discipline. The Art and Poetry paper introduced the theme of maximalism, an artistic concept that emphasises the aesthetic of excess. The artwork and poem we produced in under an hour reflected upon this idea, using bright colours that mimicked the style of the stimulus (see below).

Legacy was a new discipline this year, which replaced General Knowledge. Students did extensive research in preparation for the new task. Unexpectedly, questions were delivered verbally and students had a small window to discuss their answers, which were in the form of ‘true’ or ‘false’, multiple choice and open answer questions.  There were some challenges with sound, which we rectified for the next day of the competition.

We would like to thank Mrs Tarrant, the Library and IT team for a wonderful Decathlon this year! We are delighted with our results, including the success of our Year 7 team, which came first in NSW!  These students now go on to the Nationals to be held (in person) at Knox on 20th-21st June. Congratulations to the Year 7 team and reserves – Isabelle Attard, Grace Beck, Kiki Chen, Rosa Kim, Amber Li, Alice Mao, Katherine Pan, Ruhani Surana, Amber Wang and Alissa Xue!

Our Year 8 team was also outstanding, placing 2nd in NSW out of 78 teams. Wonderful results also were achieved by our Year 10 and 11 teams, placing 5th and 7th in NSW.

To see the incredible results of our students across the various disciplines, please click here.

From the Geography, Business and Economics Department

Mr Liam Hume, Celestino Project Lead and Geography Teacher

On Friday 14 May, Our Year 10 Elective Geography students travelled to Luddenham, Western Sydney to visit the location of the Sydney Science Park, which in 20 years’ time will be a thriving city home to thousands of people. This was a landmark occasion for the College as our students were the first to visit the site and see for our own eyes what the future for Sydney will look like.

The Sydney Science Park will be a city of the future. A SMART city and a world leader in innovation and sustainability, and our students are helping to plan it. Working with industry experts from CSIRO, Sydney water and Core Waste, students conducted a range of environmental tests, such as comparing the quality of dam water to tap water to identify the modifications that need to be made to make it drinkable and using thermal imaging sensors and infra-red technology to investigate how different surfaces can be used to keep the city cool. Students were also given the opportunity to interact with the team at Orion Drones to learn about the mind blowing power and potential of using drones for site modelling. 

This authentic data will be used to inform research projects as students work to solve complex and real world challenges facing the development of the Sydney Science Park. These ideas will be pitched to experts at CSIRO and could potentially be implemented into the design of the Sydney Science Park. Additionally, students were given tasters of a number of important future career paths and an awareness of the trans-disciplinary skills needed as students move into jobs that may not yet exist.

From the USPG

Mrs Pilar Yemma and Mrs Susan Ma, Parent Group Leaders

Thank you to Vicki and Ginin for organising a lovely coffee catch up. It was great to see such a nice group of mums enjoying great conversations on such a gorgeous day.

A friendly reminder that the Year 10 Coffee Catch Up will be the following  Thursday 27 May at 9.00am at Brick Lane Espresso, Philip Mall, West Pymble.

We hope many of you can attend. It is a great opportunity to stay connected to other parents in your year group. 

Have a great weekend.