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Urrbrae Agricultural High School 505 Fullarton Road, Netherby 5062
Ph: (08) 8274 7455 Fax: (08) 8274 7499 Email: [email protected]
http://www.urrbraehs.sa.edu.au
FROM THE PRINCIPAL AUGUST 2020| 5 Principal Report Welcome back to term 3 and a much calmer start to this term than last. Although the COVID cases in Victoria appear to be escalating, so far in SA we have done very well, and we are in a very safe position at the moment. There is no doubt that we are incredibly lucky to l ive in South Australia and that is something that we really should not take for granted. We are now counting down to the end of Winter, and the days are starting to get longer once again. Over the holidays we welcomed many new lambs to the Urrbrae flock with a number requiring hand feeding. Just like human babies, 4 hourly feeds have taken quite a bit of juggling and I would like to thank the staff members who stepped up in the holidays, and the students who took over day feeds this term. Spring is just around the corner, and this is one of my favourite seasons of the year. I would just like to say a personal thank you to Mr Parker’s Year 8 Agriculture class who helped me plant out around 30 rose bushes at the Principal’s Residence at the end of last term. Thanks to their hard work my garden should be a sea of colour by mid-Spring and I thank each and every one of them. One of the great things about attending Urrbrae is the wonderful gar-dens that surround us, and visitors to our school frequently comment on what a beautiful school we have.
Course Counselling Believe it or not, we are well into planning for 2021 including subject choices for next year. Course counselling for year 10s occurred last term, and one of their assessment tasks for the Personal Learning Plan was to look closely at the subjects that they wished to study in years 11 and 12. Experience has shown us that those students who spend the time and energy in researching what subjects they would like to do, achieve far bet-ter results and enjoy their studies so much more than those who choose blindly or at the last minute. This term will see our Year 8, 9 and 11 stu-dents select their subjects for 2021. Well-considered choices are so important to both academic and emotional wellbeing, and for this reason we urge students to think carefully and choose wisely. Unfortunately parent information evenings cannot occur this term, so we are in the process of creating virtual evenings, with information presented via PowerPoint slides. As always, you are more than welcome to make an appointment with one of the course counselling team members for individual attention.
Royal Adelaide Show Cancellation Most of you are already aware that the Royal Adelaide Show will not take place this year. According to the Show Society there have only been four previous reasons for the show not being held in its 181-year history - including both World Wars, the Victorian Gold Rush in 1852 and the Spanish Flu pandemic. 2020 is proving to be very memorable for all the wrong reasons. The Royal Show has held an important place in Urrbrae’s term 3 curriculum studies over the years, and we will all miss the opportunity to attend the largest agricultural fair in South Australia. Over 500 of our students participate in some way at the Show, whether judging, handling livestock, entering produce in different categories, olive oil tasting, or wheat sheaf tossing. This willingness to get involved at all levels means our students have made a name for themselves in the agricultural world, making Urrbrae a well-respected name at a national level. The cancellation of the show is most disappointing, but despite this we are very keen to hold some kind of replacement event to enable our stu-dents to showcase their agricultural skills in a variety of ways. We are not yet sure exactly what this will look like, but we will update you through-out the term. We are hoping to make it more than just a student-only event, and our aim is to include family and friends to help us celebrate the occasion. Of course this is dependent on COVID restrictions, and all our planning needs to take this into consideration. You will hear a lot more about this over the coming weeks, and I look forward to seeing the event take shape.
Semester 1 Reports I spent quite a while in the holidays reading through individual student report cards, and I was extremely pleased with the excellent results that were displayed across all year levels. The first half of the year was a struggle for all of us, and to see these results reassures me that teaching and learning at Urrbrae continued to be a high priority for both students and teachers no matter what was going on around us. At the virtual assembly on the first day of term I reiterated to students that they were now halfway through their studies for 2020, and I urged them to do their very best to finish off the year in a positive manner.
Road Safety Occasionally we are contacted by members of the public who are concerned at some of the road safety behaviours of our students. We take these concerns very seriously, and take action on every occasion. When specific students can be identified we immediately contact the parents, not to impose a punishment but to enable us all to work together to keep your child safe. Joslyn Fox, Principal
MIDDLE SCHOOL NEWS
ACADEMIC AWARDS
Term 3 began with our middle school students reflecting on their Semester 1 reports during pastoral care. Students reflected on their results, effort, behaviour and participation in Urrbrae clubs and set goals for improvement as part of our ‘Tracking and Monitoring’ program. Mr Z, home group teachers and I have been working our way through these and collecting some information and look forward to supporting our Year 8s and 9s in working towards their improvement goals. During our assembly in Week 2, Mr Z, Ms Fox and I were thrilled to be able to present certificates for Academic Excellence, Improvement in Results and also the School Value Award of Respect to our Year 8s and 9s. Congratulations to all of our worthy recipients. We are pleased to be able to recognise and celebrate a range of successes. The focus on Respect continues as we encourage all of our students to consider their behaviour on buses as well as how they treat others. An important part of modelling the value of Respect at Urrbrae is to make sure that we don’t condone any sort of disrespectful or intolerant behaviour and we would encourage parents to ask students to share any of these types of behaviours with parents, teachers or year level coordinators to be followed up. We have so many positive reports about our students, both at school and in the wider community, and we would like to make sure this continues and is an accurate reflection of our fantastic cohort. Finally, our middle school students are now starting the process of making their choice subject selections for Year 9 and 10. Parents can support this at home by familiarising yourselves with the choice subjects available via the Curriculum Guide located on the school website under the Curriculum tab. The online web preferences portal is also located under this tab and students will make their choices online via this program.
Stephanie Johnston, Senior Leader – Middle School
Year 8 Academic Excellence Mick Baulderstone Flavia Laera Megan Marple Mia Milochis Milla Considine Olivia Cornell Amy George Matilda Harvey Maggie Holds Emily Muggleton Isabelle Rawley Claudia Robson-Mullard Baxter Sudo Beth Van Raalte Maddy Washington Eliza Wegner Year 9 Academic Excellence Madeline Doig Abigail Henderson Xavier Miller Lauren Schulz Amy Walsh Chester Willis Ollie Bacon Ashley Bates Lisa Cowling Edie Dunning Ashlee Gunn Savannah Guthrie Hannah Henthorn Lucy Manson Hayley Wellington
IMPROVEMENT AWARDS
SCHOOL VALUES AWARDS - RESPECT
Improvement Awards Year 8 Nick Capenakis Koen Ilsley Nayana Prince Riley Thompson Oscar Maguire Theodore Van Den Ende Year 9 Max Whiting Savannah Guthrie Jack Heard Holly Gaskell
School Values Awards - Respect Year 8 Oscar Willcox Megan Marple Aurelia Hill Milla Considine Levi Doble Emily Muggleton Flavia Laera Claudia Robson-Mullard Marie Du Toit
School Values Awards - Respect Year 9 Hayley Wellington Savannah Guthrie Brodie Peruzzi Tabi Davison-Bennett Chester Willis Lucy Mason Jacob Kelly Ashley Bates
SENIOR SCHOOL NEWS
YEAR 10 ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT After a tumultuous Semester One, I would firstly like to recognise the whole year 10 cohort for exhibiting a great level of resilience during this time. The school environment looked very different for a period of weeks, with students having to adapt to a different way of learning. It was pleasing to see and I thank everyone of you. Furthermore, I’d like to acknowledge the outstanding achievements of students who received an A grade for each of their subjects in Semester 1. This reflects their hard work and commitment. Well done.
Sam Furniss , Year 10 Coordinator
Lilliana Bauer Olivia Bradley Brooke Hewitt Tessa Johnson Olivia Lombardi Ashlea Naglis Matilda Stott Tilka Wheal
As we speed headlong towards the end of the year, Year 12s have some exciting and notable events coming up as they head towards their last days of High School. It is important that we continue to encourage students to be motivated, attend school and engage with their learning. One of the most notable things approaching, for those students wishing to apply for university and TAFE courses, was the opening of the SATAC applications portal this week on August 3 for students to begin the application process. We will be going through how to do this in depth during our Pastoral Care on Monday next week, and the Home Group teachers and myself will be on hand to assist students with submitting their applications. Applications are open until September 30th with an application fee of $45. After September 30th, late applications will be accepted up until December 1st, however the application fee rises to $185 – so while there is no rush to put in applications, it is in students’ best interests (financially) to apply by September 30, 2020. At school, students have access to hard copies of the SATAC Course guide and a variety of publications from South Australian Universities in their study area or they can ask Ruth and she will give them one to take home. I encourage you to look at these with your child and discuss the courses in which they are interested. We will also be having representatives from the major Universities in to talk to our students about what those universities have to offer. These reps will also be offering 1-to-1 appointments for students wishing to discuss courses in which they are interested. Students can register their interest in these appointments with Ruth in the Senior School Centre. We are offering a parent evening on August 19 where we will run through the application process with parents and representatives of the three major SA Universities, who will present a brief outline of what they have to offer. This will be a socially distanced event held in the school hall for a maximum of 80 people, so RSVPs are essential to [email protected] as soon as possible if you would like to attend. There will be a PowerPoint available for those not able to attend, or indeed anyone wishing to go through the information again. This night will run, subject to medical advice, as the COVID-19 climate is constantly changing, and parents will be notified if it cannot proceed. I look forward to working with you all as we travel this final stretch of the High School Road…
Michelle Rowe, Senior School Coordinator Uni SA
AGRICULTURE NEWS
Urrbrae Recognised as the Overall Winning School in the 2020 Dairy Australia - Cows Create Careers Program Cows Create Careers is a national program which inspires young people to learn about dairy career pathways through hands-on experience and engagement with the Australian dairy industry. High school students build both technical and transferable skills through raising a calf, undertaking research and projects aligned to the curriculum whilst being introduced to industry advocates who explain the variety of career opportunities in the dairy industry. Each year, around 15,000 high school students participate in the Cows Create Careers program along with teachers, parents, dairy farmers and industry representatives. Urrbrae engaged in this excellent program for the first time this year with two Year 9 classes participating in the competition. The students spent 5 weeks designing and making models and learning about the dairy industry. They worked with all sorts of materials to build a model based on their Cows Create Careers topic which ranged from finance, calf rearing, dairy industry, resource management and breeding. The students also engaged with a Adelaide Hills dairy farmer via Zoom where the students asked questions about working on and managing a dairy. The most detailed models created by the students were judged by the Cows Create Careers panel and 12 of the highest achieving students from the program spent 2 hours on a ‘fun in the cloud’ Zoom session with 4 other schools involved. The interactive session included fun games and prizes, talking to industry advocates and organisers, a bakery lunch and announcement of competition winners. Urrbrae students excelled with Ollie Bacon and Xavier Miller winners of the senior sections, collecting Apple music vouchers. Urrbrae was recognised as the overall winning school team (Murray Bridge region) with our school receiving $500 in prize money to support the Urrbrae cattle program. Well done to teachers Ashley Biddell and Ashlee McEvoy for inspiring their students to participate in such an enthusiastic and successful way!
Carmen BUBNER, Hayley WELLINGTON, Amy-Lee SHOTTON, Edie DUNNING, Hannah HENTHORN, Elise HRYCIUK, Mika LAM, Carl HENTSCHKE, Will PANNELL, Ollie BACON, Xavier MILLER, with Year 9 Agriculture Teacher Ashley Biddell Poultry Update- Meatbird Shed Upgrade As part of the ongoing Urrbrae Farm improvement program we have recently installed an electrically powered space heater for the Meatbird (Broiler) Shed. The new heater will significantly save on energy costs as it replaces an inefficient gas powered heater. We are also expecting improved survival and growth rates of the birds due to the thermostatic control feature. Pictured below are Year 9 and 10 students involved in various activities associated with the current batch of meatbird chickens.
AGRICULTURE NEWS New Egg Carton Design We are very “eggcited” about our new Urrbrae Estate Free Range egg carton design (see picture on right). Our eggs are sold far and wide throughout the community so the new cartons serve as an “eggcellent” promotional tool! Thanks to all the students and staff who assisted with this project. Urrbrae Vineyard Pruned As part of the annual management cycle of the Urrbrae vineyard the Year 10 and 11 Viticulture and Winemaking students have been directly involved in the pruning program. The vines will be ready for another growth season to produce our well-regarded quality fruit! Vince Fleming, Assistant Principal - Agriculture
AQUACULTURE UPDATE
Our Southern Purple Spotted Gudgeons have successfully bred again this year! We have an aquarium with juvenile Gudgeons in the aquaculture shed being carefully monitored to ensure they are safe. This is very exciting as these fish are critically endangered in SA. We will be getting some Tandanus catfish in next week, which are another vulnerable native fish species, for more conservation projects. Aquaculture and Agriculture students have been enjoying setting up their new associated projects this semester.
John Marriott, Aquaculture Teacher
WITH THANKS—TRADITIONAL HERITAGE STONEMASONRY
The school would like to acknowledge one of our involved parents, Simon Pendle, of Traditional Heritage Stonemasonry (0400 899 525), for his expertise in the restoration of the 'Old Barn'. Simon’s craftsmanship, attention to detail, skill and time put into the much needed restoration of the Old Barn is greatly appreciated by the school and the entire Urrbrae community.
FINANCE NEWS
Finance payments Can all families please ensure the FAMILY ID, as listed on your school invoice, is included on all payments made directly to the school bank account. When this is not included the payment may not be allocated to the correct student/family. We would like to encourage families to use the BPoint payment system where possible. The Bpoint tracking and recording is very user friendly. If you would like information about this system please contact the school on 82747455. Thank you for your assistance. Karen Overall, Business Manager
Journaling thoughts Communication with others Avoiding caffeine
For my year 12 Health major assignment, I am investigating what factors contribute to the current rise of anxiety in adolescents and how we as a community and society can reduce the number of those affected. I chose this topic because as a year 12 student I have noticed the increase of stress and anxiety that our final year can bring, as well as the displacement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has worryingly resulted in a rise in mental health issues amongst students. Throughout the course of our lives, we unfortunately experience many stressful circumstances, which may include attending a job interview, finishing an assignment or going to a doctor’s appointment; these stresses are all normal parts of everyday life and although unavoidable, they generally pass after the experience. For some people though, stress and anxiety are an everyday burden in their life, causing not only feelings of stress, but fatigue, increased heart rate, nausea and even disruptions to sleep patterns. In Australia anxiety is the most common mental health condition in society, with 1 in 4 individuals developing it in their lifetime, which means that around 1 million Australians are currently affected by the debilitating condition. For adolescents, anxiety can be extremely debilitating and harmful to their social life and academic performance, as if left untreated it can have long term effects that worsen over time as they enter adulthood. Long term anxiety often develops into other mental health conditions such as depression, as well as causing the individual to become reclusive and try to avoid anxiety triggering environments. The overall symptoms of anxiety in teenagers generally vary between each individual; some experience constant feelings of nervousness, worry, and uneasiness, whilst other experience physical symptoms such as headaches, muscle cramps, nausea, shortness of breath, and trembling. Recognising that a loved one or friend is suffering from anxiety is crucial, as it is the first step in providing support in assisting them to find the treatments and help they may need. For some individuals anxiety can be self-managed through:
Exercise Meditation Getting enough sleep
To find more information about anxiety and how to manage symptoms and access free support lines visit: Beyond Blue -24/7 anxiety and depression support Visit: Beyondblue.com.au. Contact: 1300 22 4636 Holly Pasque, Year 12 Student
WELLBEING
Headspace: everyday tips and support for practising mindfulness Visit: Headpace.com.au
URRBRAE BARN MARKET
The Barn Market for 1st August was fantastic with 10 new stores. People were out and about enjoying the sun and keeping their social distance. A large of variety of stalls meant there was much to see. The next Barn Market is on Saturday 5th September so put it down in your diary.
Gayle Squire, Barn Market Manager
Tuesday 11 August School Council Wednesday 12 August Pupil Free Day
Thursday 13 August Year 10 Immunisations
Tuesday 18 August Year 9/10 Subject Information Night—POSTPONED
Wednesday 26 August Principal’s Tour
Tuesday 1 September Casual Day
Saturday 5 September Urrbrae Barn Market
Monday 7 September School Closure Day
Tuesday 15 September School Council
Wednesday 23 September Year 8 Immunisations
Wednesday 23 September Principal’s Tour
DIARY DATES AND COMMUNITY NEWS
THE SALA URRBRAE ART SHOW
THE SALA URRBRAE ART SHOW. 1-31 August 2020 This year Urrbrae Agricultural High School is once again participating in the South Australian Living Arts Festival (SALA). This year we are running our SALA exhibition online to comply with COVID19 restrictions and safety measures. The theme for this year’s exhibition is ‘ It was inspired by an artwork that was in our first Urrbrae SALA exhibition last year - 100 Birds by Sally Heinrich. This year Sally is back as our guest artist with more beautiful artworks. To view the Virtual Exhibition and a selection of artwork from our talented and creative students please use the following link VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
Suzanne Grist, Art & Design Teacher
Artwork by Sally Heinrich
Artwork by Lucy Head
Artwork by Emma Gehrmann
