Reporting
The past few weeks have been busy for teachers with report writing dominating their evenings and weekends. Mid-year reports offer an opportunity for staff to share the success and future focus of learning for your child, as well as a prediction about their end of year result if current progress is maintained. It has been pleasing to read about the excellent work ethic and commitment to learning taking place in our classrooms – “Best Effort”.

Your child will bring home their report next Wednesday. Attached to the report will be a covering letter outlining the reporting process. This is a great chance to talk to your child about the progress they are making at school. There is also a document outlining how you can book appointments with teachers as part of 3-way conferences next week. We encourage all families to take advantage of this opportunity to talk with your child’s teachers. If you haven’t booked an appointment please refer to the booking sheet. We will have a coffee van at the school on the Tuesday night, so feel free to purchase a coffee while you are here.

Don College have also offered to have two of their staff members present on the Tuesday night to answer any questions about what they can offer students in Grade 11 and 12. This will be a great opportunity for parents, especially if you have a child currently in Grade 10. Bookings with Don staff will also be made online for 10-minute timeslots.

Years 11 & 12 at Reece High School
At Reece High School, our Grade 10 students have started investigating what 2022 will look like for them. Reece High is working closely with Don College to make sure that our students are well informed about the course options available to them, so their transition is as smooth as possible. You are most likely aware of the Tasmanian government‘s plan for extending Grades 11 and 12 into high schools. In 2021, we have three students enrolled in Grade 11 & 12 at RHS. For some of our students, the change to Grade 11 can be very challenging. It is with these students in mind, that we are working with Don College, Devonport High School, Latrobe High School and Sheffield School to investigate alternative programs for these students. These programs are personalised to the individual student’s needs and may include study at their high school. Work has begun, in reviewing student data to identify those students who may need additional support in order to complete Grade 12. The aim is to assist all of our students to complete their Tasmanian Certificate of Education.

If you feel your child may struggle with the transition to Don College and might benefit from an alternative transition process, please contact Mrs Sarah Elliott (Grade Team Leader) at school on
6420 8100 or alternatively, Mrs Bernadette Hawkes (AST Year 11 and 12) on 6420 8100.

Below are some web-based resources that would help with subject selection and give parents and students access to information that will be helpful.

Resources:
Don College Website:    http://doncollege.education.tas.edu.au
TCE planner:       https://www.tasc.tas.gov.au/students/course-planner/

Culture at RHS
Over the past few years, we couldn’t have talked more highly about the culture of our school. During an external review last year, the comments from the four-person panel was glowing about how settled our classrooms were. This is outlined below.

The school has been successful in developing a culture that promotes learning. Classrooms are calm and orderly and there is a happy and optimistic feel to the school and a strong sense of pride and belonging.

The school has introduced programs and strategies to identify and address the needs of students in the school and are sourcing and applying resources to meet those needs. Tailored, early and sustained interventions are in place for students requiring additional support.

The school has established and is driving a strong improvement agenda grounded in evidence from research and practice, particularly in the areas of English and Mathematics. The leadership team recognise that highly effective teaching is the key to improving student learning throughout the school, and teachers are dedicated and committed to improving learning outcomes and their own professional growth.

The above comments have reflected the strong commitment from staff, students, and parents over a number of years. This is highlighted in our student data with significant growth in student learning being achieved each year. As families, the greatest way you can continue to support your child is to encourage them to focus on our school values. We know that if they live by these, they will continue to be successful post RHS.

Grade 10 Exams
Grade 10 exams have been running this week. This gives the opportunity for our students to develop study techniques and demonstrate their understanding of the work they have done so far this year. It has been encouraging to see the effort and application to these exams.

Support our Chaplain

Only 50% of government funding goes towards supporting the salary of our school chaplain. Darra has done an amazing job at RHS and is a great support for our students. The other half of his salary is supported by Devonport Chaplaincy, with them seeking funds from the local community.

If you would like to offer support, we would appreciate you going to the link below and clicking on RHS and contributing to the great work Darra does at our school.

https://devonportchaplaincy.org.au/fundraisers

3 Way Conferences will be held on Monday 21st and Tuesday 22nd June - these will be open to book online from 3pm Wednesday 16th June to 9am Monday 21st June.

Session Keeper via Schoolzine (SZapp) is aimed to make it easy and efficient for parents/carers to book a 3 way conference appointment.  This gives parents/carers greater capacity to choose a meeting time that suits their needs and manage/check their existing booking(s).

An email address is needed to complete bookings online.

Please download the Schoolzine App - Password for Reece High School is 2020 - if you are unsure how to do this please contact the office.

The link below will be available from 3pm Wednesday 16th June until 9am Monday 21st June to make an appointment.

https://reecehs.schoolzineplus.com/view-session/1

Instructions will also be sent home with your child's report on Wednesday 16th June

Just like the weather at the moment, Grade 7 students have been storming through their core subjects in order to complete assessment tasks and end of unit tests. During English, students have been learning about the ways in which the media present biased news. This week, they completed an article analysis that demonstrated their understanding of the way text structures and language features can influence an audience in a news story. Next week, students will complete their written summative task – constructing a news article for a specific audience. We can’t wait to put these articles together into a class newspaper.

In Maths, students have been learning how to find unknown values, using the backtracking method. They have really given their best effort in applying themselves in our algebra unit and we look forward to seeing their hard work pay off in our end of unit test this week.

Science has been all the talk in Grade 7 because it was their first time using a Bunsen burner in the laboratory. Students have been learning about separating mixtures and this week the focus has been using the evaporation technique to separate salt from water.

Our ancient Rome unit will come to an end this week, as students complete their assessment task. With only 3 weeks to go in the term, the Grade 7 staff have been really impressed with the way in which students have given their best effort. We look forward to seeing families in week 10 at our 3 Way Conferences.

Grade 8 Rube Goldberg Machines

In Grade 8 we have been learning about energy and how energy transformations and transfers occur. To demonstrate our knowledge, we made Rube Goldberg machines. Rube Goldberg machines are a chain-reaction type machine designed to perform a simple task in a complicated way.

Our task was to work in a group of two or three to design a Rube Goldberg machine with at least five steps. The task that our Rube Goldberg machine achieved was ringing a bell, others achieved watering a plant, turning on a kettle, putting rubbish in the bin and turning on a tap. The machines used multiple steps like having a marble run, using dominoes, using ramps, using matchbox cars and books knocking over cups. Everybody had to have a draft copy of their plan and the different types of energy that we thought would occur during the experiment.

Our Rube Goldberg had 7 steps total. We used an election box as the base, and we built off and on it. Our Rube Goldberg machine consisted of ramps, dominoes, marble runs, a toy car, chair, and a tub, all set up so the bell could ring. There were only two different types of energy used in our experiment. These were kinetic energy (movement) and gravitational potential energy (gravity). There was a bi-product which was sound.

Students from 8E

Studying 'By the River'

Over the last 4 weeks, Grade 9 students have been studying the novel By the River by Steven Herrick. Our particular focus has been on how real-life matters are represented in the text through the perspective of protagonist Harry Hodby. This learning has helped us to reflect on our own lives and values, and consider what moments helped to shape us as we have matured throughout our adolescent years.

One task that we completed was creating our own vignettes written in verse (appropriating Steven Herrick’s writing style). Undertaking this task required us to consider significant moments of our lives - whether they be moments of pain, happiness, learning or profundity - and write about them in the same style as Steven Herrick when he writes about Harry Hodby’s life.

By Liam 9A

Below is an example of another student’s vignette:

My New Pet

‘The lion’ stalks his prey,
pounces at it,
and gently bites its neck. 
Crawling towards the house now, 
he nudges the door open.  
I could not believe 
what I had saw. 
A living rabbit- 
half the size of him- 
hanging out of his mouth. 
Little did I know, 
this was the new 
addition to my family. 

It has been a very busy week for Grade 10 students. They have had three exams (Maths, HASS and English) and a day at RYDA. They have one more exam to go (Science) and this will be happening on Friday. Students are to be commended on their efforts in the lead up to, and through the examination process.

On Thursday, the entire Grade 10 student group travelled to Camp Clayton for the Rotary Youth Driver Awareness program. RYDA is a community road safety initiative delivering practical road safety information targeting attitude and awareness of young drivers and passengers. The program is facilitated in partnership with Rotary, presented by professionals and supported by corporate sponsors. The program is about road safety and is directed towards our young people as they approach the period in their life when they start driving a car and ride as a passenger in a car driven by one of their peers.

We are lucky to have two Artists in Residence from Bell Shakespeare joining us in week 10. They will lead students through practical activities where they will learn about the story and characters of Macbeth. This is a wonderful opportunity for our Grade 10 students and teachers.

Week 10 and 11 will also see a number of students going out on work experience. Students who are participating should have received information about their employers yesterday. They have been asked to make contact, introduce themselves and ask questions about the things they need to know before they start i.e. what to wear, start and finish times, hours per day. This is rewarding opportunity for those who are wanting to learn more about certain career choices.

Sarah Elliott
Grade 10 Team Leader

Some big decisions were made by the HPE team for our recent Cross Country carnival. There was a lot of rain predicted but we trusted the weather forecast and Tassie turned on the perfect weather for Cross Country running at Kelcey Tier on Tuesday.
The environment provided various terrains to challenge our students including dirt fire trails, dry eucalypt forest and 2 VERY enjoyable hills ? Thank you to all students who participated and a big congratulations to all of our Champions below.

We hope you had as much fun as our HPE teachers did.

Mrs Rataj
HPE Team Leader

On Wednesday June 9, students in our Inter-High team travelled to Penguin with Miss Mitchell, Miss Dolbel and Mr Forward to run the course at the Dial Sport Complex. Our team consisted of 36 students; they were amongst our top 5 finishers for their age group, from our recent School Cross Country.
The course was 4km for all grades and genders, apart from the senior boys who completed 4.5km. The terrain was nothing like our own tough Cross Country course at Kelcey Tier. The track had far less mud, obstacles and minimal elevation, thus students were well equipped to run some excellent times.

Our year 10s were first to tackle the course, with Brock returning home first, in an excellent time of 24 minutes. Our two prefects Joshua and Matilda took on the role of team captains, ensuring that students from other grades were given advice and comfort after the completion of their run. Matilda stepped up to the mark, and as the only female in Year 10 to represent us on the day, she was an excellent role model to those around her.

Some outstanding top 20 results include:

• • Bryce - 5^th place - 18.29
  • Sam - 12^th place - 19.23
  • Abbey - 4^th place - 20.21
  • Sophia - 9^th place -22.27
  • Toby - 19^th place -19.22

A special shoutout to three students who were willing to jump on board without any complaints and who were eager to run in support of the team: Jye, Jai and Trae.

Overall, the mindset that all students displayed towards getting out of their comfort zone, giving best effort, and being prepared to socialise and support each other prior to and on completion of the races was excellent.

Thank you and well done to all students involved!

Miss Mitchell
HPE Teacher

On Thursday 10th June, 19 eager students from Grades 7-9 went to the annual Rock Climbing Competition at Don College. Climbing pursuits included the inverted, overhang and ledge wall. There were also challenges that required you to stack 3 milk crates while climbing onto them (and not falling off) and climbing over and under a table without touching the ground. 

These students were randomly selected after their teachers had nominated them for giving their best effort in elements of class life here at Reece. 

Special mention to Asha for coming second on the inverted wall. 

Congratulations to our team, we hope you had a great day!

Mrs Rataj
HPE Team Leader

On Friday 28^th May the Grade 10 Hospitality students had the opportunity to visit the new TAFE Drysdale technical cooking school at Providore Place, Devonport.

Students were greeted by TAFE teacher, Chloe Parker who introduced herself and her role.  Chloe took us through the commercial kitchen, pointing out new commercial equipment used by students and gave us a run down on how the apprenticeship TAFE technical blocks work.

Chloe then took us into the bakery kitchen where we had the opportunity to view 12 bakers in action preparing a traditional black forest gâteau for assessment. Students asked lots of questions and Chloe was more than happy to answer.

Mr. A. Singline
Hospitality Teacher

Today a group of our students passed their White Card Induction to Construction course with teacher Peter Kelbassa from Safeguard.
Big thanks to Master Builders for funding the program and giving our young people a great experience and qualification for life.
Students should be very proud. We were impressed with their work ethic and enthusiasm.

Last Thursday we held our first school social and it was a great success! With a turn out of about 125 people, we had a lot of fun. This term's theme was movie characters and there were a lot of impressing costumes such as the Oompa Loompas, Men In Black and Scooby Doo to name a few.
Some highlights were the limbo competition winner Amber, the costume competition and catwalk, and the epic lolly bags that were up for grabs. We can’t forget the amazing playlist made by Brylie, which had everyone up on their feet. Make sure you come next time for lots of fun! 

Grace 
Grade 10 Prefect

On Friday 28^th May we cooked spaghetti bolognaise in Life Skills. We went to the IGA on Wednesday to buy our ingredients. We used zucchini and carrot in it too.

Thank you to Darra for helping us cook. Here we are enjoying eating our delicious spaghetti bolognaise.

Mabo Day occurs annually on 3rd June. It commemorates Eddie Koiki Mabo (29 June 1936–21 January 1992), a Torres Strait Islander whose campaign for Indigenous land rights led to a landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that, on 3 June 1992, overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius which had characterised Australian law with regards to land and title since the voyage of James Cook in 1770.

Gill Brazendale | Aboriginal Education Officer | Aboriginal Education Services
Department of Education | Reece High School, 41-43 Middle Road, Devonport64 20 8129 | 0436 865 025 Gillian.Brazendale@education.tas.gov.au