Tully State High School eNewsletter

From The Principal

Welcome back to parents and students from 2020 and of course a special welcome to all of our new parents and students. The year has started off strongly with around 760 students in attendance. Student numbers are higher than expected especially in Year 7, which has resulted in these classes having higher numbers than we would prefer. However, Year 7 students have settled in well and have been involving themselves in a range of activities around the school. While students have only been at the school for around three weeks, they have already had the opportunity to be involved in meet and greet sessions, Rugby League competitions and Year 7 Survivor!

2020 Student Success

Congratulations go out to our Year 12 Class of 2020. A range of our students took up apprenticeships and traineeships towards the end of that year. Our students also performed well in the first year of ATAR – the score which determines University access. All students who applied for university entrance attained either their first or second choice – a great result for our students. It is interesting to note courses chosen by students include Nursing, Pharmacy, Business, Engineering, Education, Aviation, Physiotherapy, Journalism and Forensics.

Student Free Days

Our Student Free Days in 2021 centred on both mandatory training plus training to support our 2021 priorities. We continued to work closely with our Cluster schools on the Student Free Days again this year; after working with our special guest speaker, staff from both our school and local primary schools participated in a range of other professional development.

Sustainable Schools

Our school has moved a little closer towards minimising a large component of our power costs via solar cell technology. At the end of 2020, the MPC had close to 700 solar cells placed on its roof, funded through a State Government program. While we know our rainfall is an impediment to all year round use of solar energy, this addition of solar power will go a long way to developing a large amount of the ongoing power needs of the school.

School Fees

As part of this mail-out you will also be receiving a school annual fees invoice. These fees help to fund a whole range of resources that student utilise in the classroom. The fees are set at $220 per year for Years 7 and 8 and $240 for students in Years 9 – 12. There is a number of ways to pay for these fees, which can be found on the school website or by contacting the school. Non-payment of fees may result in students being unable to participate in various events and activities throughout the year.

Communication

There are a range of ways in which we continue to communicate with parents and caregivers. This newsletter is produced twice a term, while each week a short snapshot of events and activities is electronically sent out to all families. The newsletter in this mailout will in future, be sent out in electronic form. You may wish to download the newsletter app. on your phone or device – schoolzine- which will notify you when a new edition has been sent. It is important that your email address is correct: please notify the school of any email changes to ensure the best communication.

Our monthly PnC meetings are held at the school library on the third Wednesday of each month commencing at 3:30pm. I highly recommend attendance at these meetings to fully engage with our school.

2020 Year 12 Success

Congratulations to All Year 12s on their successful results.

Logan McDermott achieved an ATAR 96.9. Logan was 2020 Dux, he consistently worked hard achieving an excellent result. Logan is pursuing a career in Engineering. He was accepted into The University of Queensland to undertake a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) / Master of Engineering. Very close to Logan was Abbey Edwards who attained an ATAR 95.55 . Abbey accepted her QTAC offer of Pharmacy (Honours) at James Cook University (JCU) Townsville. A number of Tully State High School students achieved an ATAR in the 90 – 99.95 range – Well done!

Some Year 12 students have secured apprenticeships and have already started their new vocational pathways. Other students have paid employment in the local community, it is rewarding knowing they are transitioning to the world of work.

SUCCESS IN ENGLISH

Tully High English students had outstanding success last year in English. This was due to their hard work, the support of their parents/ carers and the expertise of their teachers. Both Senior teachers were involved in the QCAA confirmation and external exam marking processes. The graphs below were taken from the QCAA subject report for our school and demonstrate these pleasing results.

These were the results for the two internal school assessment tasks compared to the state and confirmed through QCAA processes.

The students undertaking the Essential English course were equally successful.

To continue this success into the future, we need to all work together to ensure students’ attendance, homework completion, engagement and handwriting are all the best they can be. Learning can be uncomfortable. If things are too easy, chances are you’re not learning, so challenge yourself.

Kathleen Macdonald

Head of English

2021 HARDING MILLER EDUCATION FOUNDATION SCHOLARSHIP

Matilda Foersfrank Mia Wilson Sari Ericson Jasmine Pitman

In late last year, a number of Year 8 Tully State High girls applied for the 2021 Harding Miller Education Foundation Scholarship. The focus of this national scholarship is for girls entering Year 9 in 2021 who face some form of hardship. These students must be from a public school with evidence of high academic potential and a demonstrated motivation to succeed. In the initial stages, the winners of this scholarship receive a laptop, supplied tutoring and a $600 prepaid card for school expenses as well as a personal support coach.

After approaching the Year 8 girls last year, ten interested candidates came forward. These ten were narrowed to four who met the criteria for a formal application. These four students exemplify excellence at this school and it was such a pleasure to work with them during the application process.

Over the summer holidays, it was such a pleasure to receive a text message from the Harding Miller Foundation stating that Jasmine Pitman was a successful recipient of the scholarship. Well done Jasmine and all of the girls who applied!

A huge thanks to Mrs Rachelle Paton who made all of this possible with her tireless work with the girls applications and also to our leader, Mr Richard Graham for his guidance during the entire process.

AUSTRALIA DAY AWARDS 2021

We are proud to acknowledge the following members of our school who were recognised for their community contributions in Innisfail at the Australia Day Awards:

Taleah Davies & Taylah Reis- nominated for Service to the Community & Youth Citizen of the Year, for all their voluntary work for the hospital.

Maeve Lowe- nominated for Youth Citizen of the Year for her Leadership roles at school and within the community.

SLT Team- nominated for Containers for a Change (represented by B’Llanna Timms & Austin Stuart) and awarded with Sustainable Schools Award. Well done SLT!

Ms Cassandra Ketchell- nominated for Cultural Excellence awards for work with Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander students within the community and school.

**Taleah Davies, Austin Stuart, Maeve Lowe, B'Llanna Timms** **& Ms Cassandra Ketchell.**

MATHS DEPARTMENT

The Maths Department welcomes you back for 2021. As usual, we will be holding our free homework classes in the library every Thursday afternoon from 3pm to 4pm. This is a great opportunity for students to access extra help or simply to spend a little more time practicing with teacher guidance. This year Calypso Coaches are offering a bus service See schedule below) that will leave at 4:05pm from the school on Thursday afternoon for a small fee of $5. Spaces on the bus are limited to 15 so bookings will be required.

To book email accounts@calypsocoaches.com.au or phone Linda on 0418 154 470.

Drop off points:
-Corner of Merryburn Drive and Tully-Mission Beach Road
-Lindsay Road Carmoo (first bus stop only)
-Kennedy Esplanade, South Mission Beach (Shelter shed on beach front)

-Jackey Jackey Street Park, South Mission Beach
-Wongaling Beach (big cassowary)
-North Mission Beach (the hub).

Danielle Furmage

Head of Maths & Manual Arts

Year 7F Lighting of a Bunsen Burner

Students of 7F attained their Bunsen burner licences on Monday of Week 3. Students, having already completed laboratory safety instruction, displayed their competence to gain their licence.

Skills include:

identify and name the parts of a Bunsen burner
set up a Bunsen burner correctly and light it safely
adjust the flame appropriately from the safety flame to the heating flame

Congratulations 7F.

Susan Sedgman

Teacher

NEW TEACHING STAFF 2021

KATE MASON

Kate is a local Tully girl who moved away for many years and then moved back to the Tully area once embarking on the journey of motherhood. She has taught in lots of schools across FNQ and also ventured overseas working at a Summer Camp in America and then moved to London where she taught for nine months. Kate has predominately taught in Primary schools and is teaching Year 7 English, Geography and HPE this year. She loves being active in the outdoors and loves travelling.

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KEIRA RYAN

I am a first year teacher from the Sunshine Coast. I lived there for 11 years after moving from the UK. My subject areas are English and Humanities and I am really looking forward to my time here at Tully High, sharing my passion and knowledge for these subjects. So far the community has been so welcoming, so helpful and have embraced me. It has been such a great transition for me because of this strong community that Tully prides itself on and gradually things are falling into place. The students are wonderful, my first year of teaching is proving to come with its challenges as anything does, but overall as the term has moved into Week 3, I am enjoying the new things I have come across to make me grow more as a teacher and building relationships with the staff and students. I look forward to getting to know the community and the school more as this term goes on.

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DANIELLE WATT

Danielle Watt has relocated from Caloundra, Sunshine Coast to Kennedy with her partner Darrin Johnson. She was born on the Sunshine Coast and has never lived anywhere else. Danielle Watt has recently graduated her double degree in Chemical Science and Education at The Sunshine Coast University. Danielle started university in her mid-thirties; her previous career was in Banking Customer Service for 17 years at her local BOQ branch. Danielle has two boys; Kai is 14 years of age and Flynn is 12 years old. Kai is into everything to do with fishing and boating and Flynn is interested in everything to do with gaming and playing Yu-Gi-Oh! During the school holidays, Danielle is looking forward to exploring the Far North Queensland with her partner Darrin and her boys, with plenty of camping, fishing, bushwalking and snorkelling to be done. Danielle is very passionate about self-evaluation and wants to inspire all her students to reflect on ways to improve on their own life journey.

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HANNAH BROCKHURST

My name is Hannah and I recently moved to Tully as a Year 7 Science and Maths teacher. I am very excited to be part of the Tully High team and look forward to meeting new faces over the years. I completed my education degree at QUT in Brisbane after deferring a science degree at UQ. My partner and I left our families in Brisbane and road-tripped to Tully in January, bringing along our cattle dog, Woody. Our holidays and weekends are usually filled with camping and 4WDing around coastal towns and finding good places and markets to swim and eat. In my spare time you’ll find me reading, cooking, binge-watching tv series or playing fetch with Woody. I’ve played a wide variety of sports throughout my life (and even was a gymnastics coach prior to being a teacher) and hope to play touch footy socially later this year. I’m very excited for 2021 and can’t wait to see what this year holds (hopefully not another lockdown)!

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National Youth Science Forum.

From the 5 to the 22 January, I participated in a science forum known as the National Youth Science Forum. Typically, this program runs for 14 days in Canberra or Brisbane; however, due to COVID, this year’s program was digital with an opportunity for some in-person STEM days. The 2021 NYSF Year 12 Program featured online sessions from two Nobel Prize winners, over 20 top experts in subjects ranging from venom to drones, workshops with leading scientists and STEM organisations, and an array of live-crosses to some of the world’s best science and technology facilities, including to Casey Station in Antarctica and CERN in Switzerland.

NYSF is a program for youth by youth with ‘staffies’ who have completed the program as students the previous years running the events. This program is something I have always aspired to do for years and when it was finally my turn I was beyond excited. However, I had some concerns and worries that I would not enjoy myself as it was now online, and not to be surrounded by other students and really emersed in science. These fears were promptly squashed when the program started. There was not a day that didn’t contain a fascinating presentation by a professional in their field. To ensure we still had the full NYSF experience, many social events were run digitally like a trivia night, games night, formal dinner and many amazing talks in our groups.

I have met so many amazing, likeminded people who I will always cherish. This program really opened my eyes to the endless possibilities and opportunities that are out there waiting for me to explore. I cannot recommend this program enough to any aspiring STEM students. It truly was a lifechanging event that has made a positive impact on me and prepared me for the challenges of Year 12. The fun doesn’t end there for me, now I become an NYSF alumni - gaining access to a plethora of events run by the NYSF.

Thank you to everyone who made this possible.

ISABELLA PAPADIMITRIOU

Year 12 Student.

SLT Induction Day

Last Tuesday the new Student Leadership Team spent the day getting to know each other and beginning to bond.

Class representatives from Years 7 through to 11, together with the two Senior and the two Junior Captains and all the House Captains, took part in a range of activities designed to expand their knowledge of each other and themselves, exploring their likes and dislikes, values and opinions. Some games were pure fun, others had a more penetrating agenda.

All of the students impressed Ms Tenni and I with their enthusiasm and willingness to open up, collaborate and explore, regardless of the nature of the task presented. It is not very often that such a vertical combination of students takes place in our curriculum, centred as it is on age stratification: it is rewarding to observe how well differently-aged students can interact and appreciate each other.

The day ended with our first General Meeting, led by the President, Lola Zamora, who has already proven herself a very competent leader during last term’s transition period and in the initial two weeks of this term. We outlined the format that such meetings would be structured around, fast-tracked plans for Valentine’s Day only days away, and shared ideas for this year’s goals.

The team already shows much promise – we are excited to work with students who are so committed to contributing positively to their school and community.

Ms Bromley

SLT Induction Day 2021

Just days after their official induction, core members of the 2021 SLT proved to be efficient, reliable and generous, not only arriving early to school to organise allocation of the roses they had already taken orders for in the days previous, but also to wrap the brownies that they had generously baked for the occasion.

Even as they were knee-deep in cellophane and checking lists, classrooms, and delivery instructions, last minute orders kept arriving in the form of students anxious to send a rose or ‘buy their babe a brownie’.

Then during Period 1, these students made the rounds of classrooms with buckets of beautiful Tableland roses and trays of those delicious brownies, to the delight of the lucky recipients.

Many Tully High students took this opportunity to express friendship and gratitude, others gave from an impulse of kindness. Friday was a very happy day.

Ms Bromley

Valentine's Day 2021

YEAR 7 - NEW GROUP READING TEST

The Year 7s will all be sitting an individual reading test in week 5 to gauge their reading ages. Teachers then use this information to create learning activities that will best suit students and help them develop in each subject area. The test is digital and is called NGRT (new group reading test) and is designed, marked and analysed by an international educational testing organisation. Parents will receive a letter from me later in the term with their child’s individual result and advice for moving forward. The test responds to each student’s responses on the way through and differentiates accordingly. It can identify reading ages up to 17 + years. Students should bring earphones for week 5, if possible.

Tully High has a school wide approach to reading across all of the subject areas. The demands for reading increases dramatically in high school: technical manuals/ instructions in Digital and Manual Arts areas, complex scientific texts, evaluating primary sources in History, unpacking complex word problems in Maths and analysing Literature in English. In Year 8, students are explicitly taught reading strategies on a weekly basis. Then, their reading age is tested again at the end of Year 8, and a further letter with individual results and progress is sent home.

Reading both fiction and non-fiction at home as well as at school is as important as reading homework in primary school. The library is open for students to borrow books before school, both breaks and immediately after school. Junior classes are usually brought to the library once a fortnight.

Any questions, please email kmacd15@eq.edu.au.

Kathleen Macdonald

Head of English and Library.

Yr12 Art Students are out and about.

The Yr12 Art students have been tasked with producing an artwork that communicates the history of Tully and their family’s history in Tully. To do this we went to the local cemetery, the Diggers Museum in El Arish, the Girrigan Corporation Art Gallery in Cardwell and town itself.

A big thank you goes to Mrs Marie Carmen for not only taking the time to introduce our students to the history of El Arish and its people but to explain the archival techniques and protocols necessary to help these historic records to flourish.

Joanne at the Girrigan Art gallery who not only imparted her knowledge of the significant artefacts and artwork on display but also how to curate an exhibition with particular attention to display cabinets, plinths and lighting- thank you Joanne.

And now it’s over to the creativity of our students to resolve this project.

On tour was: Damien, Kai Morris, Mackenzie Conaghty, Haylee Brown, and Mikayla Signorotto

HOSPITALITY

The hospitality department has started the year off with a bang, with their first successful lunch service. Students have continued this year with their espresso coffee making skills and sell coffee during regular services to Staff. (And don’t the staff love their coffee).

We look forward to continued projects with our Senior Hospitality students and Junior Food Studies students becoming more aware of nutritious food choices.

Textiles has also been incorporated into the program and students are looking forward to producing some amazing items.

Year 7's Off to a Top Start

Hello! My name is Rhiannon Passfield and I am the Year 7 Coordinator for 2021. We have had a great start to the year with our new cohort of students settling into high school life. I went from a small primary school to a large high school so know how intimidating this process can be, but the Year 7s have been receiving lots of support from their teachers, older students and each other to find their way around and learn the expectations of Tully SHS. Of course, their families are also helping them with this transition and it was great to be able to meet so many parents and carers at our annual Meet & Greet that occurred on Thursday 4 February.

To help build and consolidate new friendships, students also enjoyed a day of games and activities at our Year 7 Survivor Day on 12 February. Working together to get through Crossfit, problem-solving challenges, a scavenger hunt and water world activities, students cheered each other on, pushed themselves out of their comfort zones and demonstrated wonderful teamwork skills throughout the day. A big thanks to our Head of Junior Secondary, Leandra Willis, all the HPE staff involved and the Student Leadership Team that helped make the day run smoothly.

Looking forward to a wonderful school year with this cohort.

TSHS SPORTS NEWS

The annual Innisfail 9s Rugby League competition was played on Friday 5 February. It was a fantastic way to kick off the sporting year with 69 students representing Tully SHS. Both the Year 9/ 10 and the Year 11/12 boys and girls teams progressed through to the finals matches. The Year 9/10 girls were victorious in taking out their final. Congratulations to all students and teachers involved in this event.

The Young Gumboots Theatre Group

Gumboot Theatre Company is excited to announce the premiere of a drama club for young people. Participants will learn the basics of stagecraft while developing confidence, focus, persistence, resilience, communication and teamwork skills, all while having a boot-full of fun.
Sessions are open to youngsters from Year 3 and up. Running Thursday afternoons 3:30 – 4:30pm in the Drama room at Tully SHS, starting Thursday 18/02 – 25/03. For further information, or to register please contact:

Rhiannon Passfield: rpass24@eq.edu.au or 4068 4555.