Illalong Newsletter 30 October 2020

Premiership Football and Exams!

For those of you who like soccer, I am confident that this will be an interesting article. For those who are not so keen on the game – hopefully the analogies I make will still make this an interesting article for you.

Let’s have a look at some data - The English Premiership and winning teams since its inception under this name.

Manchester United – winner 13 times
Chelsea – winner 5 times
Arsenal – winner 3 times
Manchester City – winner 3 times
Blackburn Rovers – winner 1 time
Leicester City – winner 1 time
Liverpool – winner 1 time

To focus on one club - Leicester City – they had quite a season five years ago for what would be considered a ‘small’ club – did they expect at the beginning of the 2015/2016 season to be lifting the trophy after 42 matches? I am sure that they hoped – but perhaps not thought - it could truly be a possibility. There are some ‘big name clubs in The English Premiership and with that brings money and hence the affordability of big squads and star players. And so, as Leicester sat at the top of The Premiership during that season, the experts predicted that their reign would be temporary - it can’t last, the ‘big’ clubs, one of the clubs that always seem to win, would overtake them - and win. They would snatch the trophy from them at some stage before the final match.

But it didn’t happen - Leicester City showed remarkable resilience, tenacity - and of course talent – they stuck in there and won.

So, Leicester City, said the ‘experts’ – had a lucky season – less injuries than the other clubs, some of the refereeing decisions ‘went their way’. They won’t ever do this again! 2016 – 2017 Leicester finished 12th. Perhaps the ‘experts’ had finally got it right? 2017 – 2018 they finished 9th – better, but no trophy. Same in 2018 – 2019.

We now come to 2019 – 2020. It would be nice to end this part of the story with a win (unless you support Liverpool Football Club) – but they didn’t – however they did come fourth.

My question to the Year 11 cohort in an assembly this term – how many of you are prepared to show the same tenacity, drive and determination as Leicester City did when you approach your examinations? And not just this year, or next but every year. Keep trying and keep competing.

Our Year 12 students are presently sitting their external examinations and after the targeted revision and support of the past few months and the absolute determination they have shown in their work - hopefully they will have the confidence that Leicester City had during the 2015/2016 season and demonstrate just how good they are at each of their subjects.

My Year 12 Physics class haven’t always ‘won’ (to use some footballing parlance) every match. Sometimes they have ‘drawn’ and sometimes they have ‘lost’. But what made me proud, as their teacher, was the determination they showed to improve after each ‘loss’. The analytics carried out on what had worked and what hadn’t – analytics that would have made a Premiership Coach proud. And then the learning and search for improvement. And this is true not just of my class. The new Australian Tertiary Admission Rank has certainly presented the odd challenge and all of our students evaluated each challenge and then found ways to overcome it. You can’t really ask for more than that.

To conclude, exam success needs a solid foundation - just as a club who wins the premiership will have prepared, so does a student. Early, focussed revision with a planned revision timetable and effective revision techniques all help. But, to be truly successful it needs to be coupled with that resilience and tenacity – and don’t fear failure in the lead up (Leicester City were almost relegated from The Premiership the season before they won it) – just learn from failure!

Richard Worsey
Director of Teaching and Learning

From the Year 2 Classrooms

Snap, crackle and pop! Mixing and measuring has been the focus for Science this term.

The students have enjoyed experimenting and morphing into master chefs, mad scientists and doctors when investigating how materials can be combined. They added cornflour to water to create oobleck (slime). Lava lamps erupted from oil, food colouring, detergent and Alka-Seltzers. Copha was melted and mixed into cocoa and rice bubbles to create delicious chocolate crackles which the students thoroughly enjoyed.

Our experiments generated scientific vocabulary with words like combined, dissolved, emulsion and separate. This was also an opportunity to revise our procedural text as we used it for experiments and cooking. Does this sound like a great term, or what?

The Grade 2 classrooms have also come alive this term with walls of art filled with gumnut babies and native Australian fauna. Throughout our history unit we have been researching May Gibbs and the children are now experts on everything involving Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. Who knew that a story famous among grandparents was still a crowd favourite now? The classroom soon became a hub of technology when the children began to transfer their knowledge onto fabulous PowerPoint presentations.

Luke – 2R 'We mixed rice bubbles, cocoa, icing sugar and coconut together and then added melted copha to make chocolate crackles. They were delicious.'

Adelynn – 2R 'We used a plastic bottle and we added oil and water with some food dye and glitter. We put in an aspirin and watched the oil and water bubble to make our lava lamp. It was great fun.'

Isobelle – 2S 'We made chocolate crackles for a science experiment on mixtures. Scientist don’t always use chemicals. Sometimes they use food. It was a yummy experiment.'

Alyssa – 2S 'The chocolate rice crackle is a science experiment because we have been learning about mixtures and to make the crackles you have to make a mixture. I learned that a solid could turn into a liquid and then back into a solid. That was the copha.'

Arthur – 2B 'We made oobleck (slime) out of cornflour, water and food colouring. It felt soft when I touched it, but when I punched it, it was hard.'

Benjamin – 2B 'The oobleck felt really weird because when we mixed the cornflour and water it was gooey. When I was stirring it, it was hard but when I put my hand in the bowl it sank. It was so much fun.'

Sean – 2M 'I liked how when we put the tablet into the water, bubbles started to come out of the bottle. They evaporated and went down. It was fun!'

Abigail – 2M 'When we shook it, some of the coloured water and glitter went into the oil. I really liked the activity.'

Yum - 2M 'I learned about chemical reactions and mixtures. I liked how the food colouring changed the water. The water had changed, and it could no longer be separated from the food colouring. The activity was fun!'

Lucy Littlely
Learning Assistant - Junior School

Guardians of the Art Galaxy 2.0

It was Henry David Thoreau who once said 'It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see' and this particularly holds true for the study of Visual Art and even more importantly for teachers when endeavouring to comprehend the students with whom they interact.

In my special teacher project over the past two years I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with a range of gifted art students. Often these students may struggle in many of their other classes but they have been able to excel in drawing, painting, mixed media and digital processes because success breeds success. It is really gratifying to see their self-esteem rise as they realise that they are actually adept at something which is highly valued and in turn their confidence and self-motivation matches this realisation.

For this year’s project I wanted to build on the success of last year when I worked with students such as Shenghan (Simon) Lin who designed and created the phenomenal Wizard’s head for our world-class performances of Wicked. After such a triumph, new goals were needed and Shenghan has been working tirelessly for months now to learn new digital skills and is researching 1950s Broadway images to allow him to create a digital projection backdrop for next year’s musical Guys and Dolls. This real life challenge carries with it all the gravitas of an architectural, multimedia and virtual engineering project and he is revelling in the design, although his vision often exceeds the capabilities of his hard drive and the range of the digital platform on which he is creating. It’s been a new frontier for him as he traditionally shuns computer tools to create art and his pencil drawings and paintings are da Vinci-esque in his ever-expanding sketchbook.

The idea of a real-life brief fuelled another aspect for this year’s guardians (see title above) when Willem (Theiric) Piers ten Ham, Natalia Pattison and Edward “Call me Ted” Hardy were given the challenge of designing medieval banners for the upcoming Junior School Musical Once Upon a Mattress.

Going well beyond the weekly painting and glueing of the Creative Crew, Willem had to devise a questionnaire for the Senior Leadership Team to complete so that he and Lixuan (Chloe) Wang could create custom banners based on their favourite colours, patterns and 'spirit' animal. If anyone is ever wondering about how versatile Powerpoint is for creative endeavours, Willem deftly wrangles it to create outcomes of which an Adobe Photoshop expert would be proud. Lixuan has a designer’s aesthetic eye and relishes a challenging task where she can demonstrate her many artistic talents.

Meanwhile Natalia and Edward, sorry Ted, were looking at larger heraldic banners and trying to give a guernsey to the lesser known animal champions. Not for them, lions, stallions and dragons but penguins, flamingos and ibis all will be seen gracing the walls of the castle banquet hall in technicolour glory. All of the students in the Guardians project possess a wry sense of humour and a quirky view of the world around them and are able to harness their higher-order art skills to create charmingly ironic works. When these tasks result in works that enhance theatre productions and other real-world applications, it’s wonderful to see the students be appreciated by so many and to be seen.

Vocational pathways have been revealed to these keen designers and their resumes are already being populated with higher-order exemplars of their skills. As long as we have an art galaxy and there are guardians with such wonderful weapons, then Planet Art is in safe hands.

Barry Voevodin
Visual Art Teacher

Second-hand Textbook Trading

A.B. Paterson College is conscious of the need to provide an efficient process for families to be able to buy and sell second-hand textbooks and other student resources.

I am delighted to inform you of a new initiative to provide parents with the ability to trade these second-hand items via the Sustainable School Shop website, www.sustainableschoolshop.com.au.

Results from other schools have been excellent - families have enjoyed a very comprehensive and convenient method of buying and selling second-hand items. The new service is very accessible, it preferences our school first and then provides access to buy and sell items with families attending other schools - many schools use this service. Access to second-hand textbooks, calculators, stationery etc is available all year.

For the best results:

Register on the Sustainable School Shop website
List your items for sale
List wanted ads for those items you are looking to buy
Our College booklists are loaded into the system to make listing ads easy
The system matches the ads of buyers with sellers and notifies the buyer via email
Buyers contact sellers and arrange where and when to trade
Most trading will occur with other parents from the school
Parents are well supported via Sustainable School Shop
The system is simple and easy to use - If you don’t have a computer, internet access or an email address, please call the Sustainable School Shop for assistance. You can pre-arrange the transaction and then trade after the texts are not required.

A.B. Paterson College is providing this service to our community; when registering on the Sustainable School Shop you need to nominate the College to receive your subscription.

We are very excited about this new initiative being offered to parents and we hope you will make the most of the opportunity to annually recycle your student’s school items to help another family and student at our school.

For further information, click here: Sustainable School Shop

Tim Grosser
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS & PLANNING

Student Achievements

Queensland All Schools Athletics Championships

Congratulations to Emelia Surch of Year 11 on a wonderful weekend of competing in the QLD All Schools Athletics Championships! Emelia won the gold medal in the 100m hurdles, beating her PB by 1.03 seconds to win in a very fast 13.86. She achieved another PB in the 400m hurdles to win Silver, in a very tight race, whereby Emelia was behind and had to chase down the second placed runner at the final bend in the last 100m. Congratulations to Emelia on these outstanding performances!

Mr Ian Taylor
Director of Activities

Young Composer

Year 9 student, Joe Dejima, recently entered the ASME Queensland 2020 Young Composers' Competition. His original composition was awarded third place in the Topology Middle Division.

The annual ASME Queensland Young Composers’ Competition provides the opportunity for young composers from across the state to submit their own works for critique and assessment by adjudicators who work as professional composers in Australia. Previous entrants and winners of the Young Composers’ Competition have gone on to study composition at a tertiary level or work in the music industry as professional composers. Congratulations Joe on this outstanding achievement!

Triathlon

Congratulations to Jonas Longhurst, Riley Grimmer and Hudson Dilkes on their great performances in the All School Triathlon held at Kawana over the weekend. This was a qualifying event for selection in the South Coast Regional Team to compete at the State Championships in February next year. In a very competitive race, all the boys performed exceptionally well amongst more than 80 competitors from six regions and all are expected to be announced in the Regional team.

Jonas Longhurst was 4th overall (2nd for South Coast) Riley Grimmer was 10th overall (5th for South Coast) and Hudson Dilkes was 41st overall. This very challenging event was held in very wet conditions and fortunately nobody crashed on the wet roads!

Congratulations to Jonas, Riley and Hudson and we wish them all well for selection in the South Coast Team and their preparation for the State Championships early in 2021.

Ian Taylor
Director of Activities

Matilda Pens a Winning Story

Year 7 student, Matilda Grant, has won the National Writing Challenge 2020, run by Puffin Publishing and Just Kidding, Australia's biggest children's magazine! This year's competition attracted over 1,100 entries nationally. Matilda won the 11 - 12 years age category for her heart-wrenching refugee story, The Outsiders. Congratulations Matilda!

You can read Matilda's story here: The Outsiders By Matilda Grant

Gold Coast Tennis Representative

Congratulations to Benjamin Elphick of Year 10 who has been selected to represent Tennis Gold Coast (TGC) in the Max Stuart & Milton Rothman Shield Day against Tennis Brisbane (TB).

This full day event will be held on Sunday, November 1 at the Shaw Park Tennis Centre in Brisbane.

We wish Benjamin all the best for a great day of Tennis on Sunday and continued success with his Club Tennis.

Mr Ian Taylor
Director of Activities

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