Dear Burnie High School Community,

As a school we are well into Term 2 and there has been much to celebrate.

Staffing News

Mr Salter has joined the senior leadership team to undertake an Acting Assistant Principal role for Term 2 but will continue working alongside Ms Crocker as a Grade 9 student support leader. Mr Douglas has assumed an Acting AST role for Term 2 but will also continue in his Grade Leader role working in conjunction with Mr Warsing with the Grade 10 cohort.

Mr King has continued at Burnie High School for Term 2, moving from the HPE area to the Maths/Science team to take over from Mrs Glover who retired. Mr Hall has joined the MDT department due to Mr Saint-John also retiring and Ms Coxan has continued in her role at BHS for Term 2, teaching in a wide variety of curriculum areas as well as our study hub.

Parent Teacher

During Week 2 of term, we had over 200 parents come to Burnie High School to discuss their child’s progress in a range of subject areas. This goes to show how invested parents and carers are about their children’s education and learning, along with what they can work on to further enhance their knowledge. Thank you to all parents who made the time to come in for these conversations. Thank you also to staff for the late night away from family and friends. Please remember if you would like to discuss anything with your child’s teachers that you can always call the school office to arrange an appointment or communicate directly with them through SeeSaw or via email.

Kinmen

We were delighted to be informed that a group of students from Kinmen will be joining us for a 2-week period later in year. Grade Leaders in Grade 9 and 10 have held some meetings with students about the opportunity of hosting students for the period of time as well as a small group of BHS students being selected for an outbound trip to Kinmen in the 2^nd half of the year. Please contact Mr Douglas if you would like further information.

Cross Country Carnival

Our whole school cross country carnival was held on May 24. I was very impressed with the motivational speeches that staff house leaders gave during a recent assembly about why their house would win the carnival and reasons for students to turn up and give their Best Effort on the day. Grade Leaders put together a fantastic range of engaging programs for students to participate in on the morning of the carnival. I had my fingers crossed and the weather gods were kind to staff/students on the day! A very enjoyable day for all involved.

James Thompson

Acting Principal James Thompson james.thompson@decyp.tas.gov.au  

Assistant Principal Sheree Hodgetts sheree.hodgetts@decyp.tas.gov.au

Acting Assistant Principal Joshua Salter joshua.salter@decyp.tas.gov.au

School Business Manager Lois Cameron lois.cameron@decyp.tas.gov.au

School Office 03 6431 2744 burnie.high@decyp.tas.gov.au

Burnie High School School Association AGM will be held on Monday 17th June commencing at 5pm. The meeting will be held in the Administration Building. More information will be sent out to families via SeeSaw.

Grade 8 students have been working on their Story Pot Unit in Art. This Indigenous Unit is where the students look to the Hermannsburg Potters for inspiration.

In Study Hub Steam students have been investigating catapults. Students built catapults and used elastic potential energy to launch marshmallow payloads, which were different fractions of a whole. Repetitions were taken to ensure testing was fair, and the distances the payloads travelled were measured and recorded. Then the data was averaged to make it easier for comparison. Hardly any marshmallows were eaten on the way.

The creative writing class has been interviewing option classes from around the school to create articles for the newsletter. Students had to decide which class they thought would be good to interview and then go and ask the students and teachers politely if they wanted to be interviewed. This activity was fun as the class got to use what they had learnt in a real situation. They had to understand how to comment respectfully on each other’s work and write in a professional manner. The teacher for this class - Mr Thorne – is continually pushing students to do their best and improve on what they have written.

“This was a lot of fun as we got to put what we have learnt so far into practise.” – Morgan Ling

“This class is a lot of fun as it is about extending peoples creativity. Getting to talk with students about what they were passionate about was fun.” – Amali Evans

The Creative Writing class would like to say thank you to Mrs Pennington, Mr Rolls and Mr Munday for letting us interview them and their class.

By Mia French and Daisy Cock

Robotics and Programming

This year’s Senior Robotics and Programming class is currently undertaking a task to build and program a sumo wrestling robot for a class competition. Just upon entering this room you can see the jovial yet competitive atmosphere of the class; and they were eager to show off their innovative designs. Many students that were interviewed mentioned the engaging community around this class and the joy they get from being around likeminded people. Johannes, the German exchange student in year ten, commented that his favourite thing about the class is the friends he has made.

It is clear to see the potential these students have in the ever-advancing field of tech.

Written by Morgan Ling with images by Charlie Tospell.

Mrs Pennington's Sport Science class

Mrs Pennington’s Sport Science class so far in the term have been doing the yoyo test. The yoyo test helps show the students and Mrs Pennington how well they can use oxygen.

Some questions that we have asked both staff and students are:

1. What do you enjoy most about (teaching) this class?
2. What is this class about?
3. Why did you choose this as an option?
4. What options are you hoping/ or have choose for next term?
5. What are you doing in class today?

As part of the project, we had to interview both teachers and students while they were in the class. We asked Mrs Pennington the questions that we had written, and she gave us impressive answers for our questions.

These are the answers/ results for two questions that Mrs Pennington gave us: 

1. she explained that the sports science class is a mixture of theory and fitness and is also about students trying to reach the best of their physical ability. 

2. in class she explained that they were doing the yoyo test, and that the yoyo test is based on how well the students respond when using oxygen while only having a one second break to breath in and out the oxygen. 

We were so glad that we were able to go around to Mrs Pennington’s sport science class and ask her and some students the questions and we were also glad that we were able to get straight forward answers.

By Indiana, Marni and Rhianna

As part of Cross Country Day, students in Years 7 & 8 had a visit from Tasmanian Police to discuss the merits of being smart on social media through the ThinkUKnow program.  Two officers spoke to groups of students about privacy settings on their apps, and the importance of not accepting friend requests from people who they do not know. 

In giving students examples of problems that may arise as a result of their individual choices, we hope that students are more aware of how their actions can have consequences that impact on them for a lifetime.