HouseNews

The starkness of this winding down and handover for Year 12s, is further evidenced by the final phase of the process for the selection of the Class of 2023 leadership team which culminated this week, through the interview that each candidate has with the panel. Year 12 Coordinator for 2023, Mrs Foster, Heads of School Mr Heath and Mrs Thomas, Head of Teaching and Learning Mrs Mano and Mr Walmsley, joined me in constituting the panel. Last week, all secondary students and Staff have had the opportunity to vote for the candidates, following the speeches they made. This is always a wonderful time to hear from each student, their leadership vision, and their involvement in a wide array of activities through the years.

I urge all students in the Secondary School to look ahead, and plan. We do not view leadership selection from the narrow prism of Term 3, Year 11, but rather the engagement that each of these students has had, and the impact they have on their cohort, and the greater student body over the years.

Meanwhile, success continues for Pittwater House students. As our participation in the Manly Warringah Netball Association Saturday competition grows, it was marvelous to be with the U12 team last Saturday and witnessing their success in the Grand Final. This is an undefeated team, 16 wins from 16 games. We are so proud of these girls and their C10 coach, Molly. It would be remiss of me though not to pay tribute to the wonderful Mrs Grigg who has been instrumental in developing the Pittwater House Netball Club, and the weekly support of Ms Barnett and Ms Haigh. Pittwater House is always well supported and through the season, it has been fabulous to see the sideline support group understandably growing, and by last Saturday, it was quite an army!

The week also saw us acknowledged as overall champions at the CDSSA Athletics Carnival. There were so many wins, several broken records and a swathe of Age Champions. Pittwater House won, by a proverbial ‘country mile…’. How fitting that our College Head Prefect, Olivia, finished her Athletics career in such style. Congratulations to all members of this winning team.

Individuals too have had a week of achievement. C8 student, Lillie, is the pride of us all, coming away from the Australian Schoolgirls Swim Meet in Queensland with 5 Gold Medals (in every individual event in which she swam), and two School National Records in her individual events and a Silver and a Bronze in her two team events. No wonder she was awarded the Female Swimmer of the Meet.

And let us not bypass the Staff! Junior School teachers Mrs Treloar, Mrs Garing and Mrs Holgersson have each been feted on the wider stage. Mrs Holgersson has been selected to present at the prestigious Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) 2022 Conference, as one of 744 applications submitted. This international research conference will enable dissemination of findings from her Doctoral Thesis which is underway and covers ‘the digital teaching approaches in primary schools and the impact of these practices on teachers’ effective delivery of the curriculum in what we know as mobile-supported learning.’  Nicole draws on the experience of teachers before and during the period of Remote Learning with her findings informing future practices and support strategies.

Mrs Treloar last week presented to the NSW Teachers’ Guild Awards on the pedagogy and competencies that underpin Deep Learning and how it is making a difference at Pittwater House. As a member of our School’s Deep Learning Team, Mrs Treloar made specific reference to the Year 5 History project last year that has segued into this year group, as present Year 6 students, the key teacher framed-student led pedagogy. Mrs Treloar has an anxious wait until November to find out if she will be announced as the overall winner of the prestigious NSW Teachers’ Guild Awards.

Finally, Mrs Garing has been published in the ACER’s Teacher Magazine https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/authors/acer. This beautifully written and finely researched article captures a key topic” Harnessing collaborative expertise to support our most vulnerable students.” The initiative Bridget has shown with her great writing craft is testament to her professionalism.

I hope you will all join me in congratulating these three outstanding Junior School practitioners. How fortunate are the students to have such expertise leading their learning each day. And how wonderful for our team to work with such professionals. There is much joy in every day and these accolades need to be shared amongst our Pittwater House family.

May the weeks ahead be all that you wish.

The Pittwater House Christmas Fair is our biennial fundraising event, hosted by our volunteer-run Pittwater House Parents’ Association (PHPA).

The last time we were able to celebrate was in 2018 (thanks to COVID-19) where over 2,000 people from all over the Northern Beaches attended. 

This year, we expect it to be bigger, with even more attendees flooding our School Oval, and better than before, raising more funds for the PHPA’s initiatives. To date, the PHPA have this year, delivered much needed improvements to our School such as a new Junior School playground, new laser cutting machines and a new lighting rig in the Performing Arts Centre.

We are excited to announce and thank these Pittwater House family businesses who have come on board to sponsor the event.

To read more about these wonderful businesses, click the links below:

• Knight Frank
• City Cave
• 7th Day Brewery
• Betta Fire Protection

There are plenty of great sponsorship opportunities to fit all budgets, and we welcome the opportunity to discuss these with you, whether you have a family run business or you know someone who has a business who would like to get involved. Our PHPA goals are simple:

“to support the community and its businesses and continue providing exceptional facilities for our current and future students.”

If you would like to discuss sponsorship opportunities, please email: phpa@tphs.nsw.edu.au

Our Public Speaking Competition got under way in Week 5 with every student participating in the first round. For some students this took great courage and I applaud all who overcame their fears and delivered their speeches to their peers. Many finding it wasn’t so frightening after all.

Weeks 6 and 7 offered more author opportunities and was also packed with exciting sporting and academic competitions as well as the Year 2 OEG camp day to Lane Cove National Park. Year 2 had an amazing experience, learning about working in teams, collaboration, and inclusivity, in preparation for their overnight camping experience next year when they are in Year 3 (see full report below).

37 students participated in the ICAS English, Science and Mathematics competitions with a 7:30am start. The competitions are accessible to a variety of Australasian countries and were all on-line; which was a very new experience for our younger students. They are all wished the very best for their results.

Mr Whisson was able to report that the Junior School Athletics Team represented themselves and the School in an outstanding manner, both through their team spirit and their individual events and team participation. More about this outstanding representation in the Sports section of HouseNews.

Our Chess representatives, Ethan and Noah, P4, Leonardo, Jack, Manning with Miles, as trusty reserve, all P2, represented Pittwater House Junior School in the NSW Academy of Chess Semi-Final. Although not proceeding to the final, Pittwater House could boast about competing with the youngest team ever to reach this level. I predict they will be a force to contend with in the future.

Continuing this industrious theme, this week we will be holding the very entertaining Public Speaking Finals, and Year 2 will be travelling to experience the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as part of their Creative and Performing Arts Key Learning Area.

I would like to remind parents of students from Year 4 to Year 9 about the Cyber Safety Parent Information Session on Gaming and Screentime to be held in the Great Hall on Thursday evening 1 September  from  6:30 – 8:00pm. 

On Thursday 25 August, Year 2 had their first experience of undertaking camp activities in amongst the beautiful surroundings of Lane Cove National Park. The base camp was at Commandment Rock Picnic Area where many fun and engaging activities were enjoyed by everyone. These included: Initiative and Team Building tasks, Treasure Hunt and Explore, Environmental activities and Shelter Build, as well as Exploration of surrounding areas. The students used teamwork to create shelters that would withstand a rainfall. They challenged themselves to use what was available to think of designs that would solve the problem. Throughout each activity the students worked on building resilience when the task was difficult, courage to try and test new ideas and work with partners they may not necessarily have had the chance to work with before. Students were excited to explore areas of the National Park and to seek out finer details in their treasure hunt. During the team building tasks, students were challenged to be patient and accommodating of each other’s ideas and then allow everyone the chance to experience trial and error to solve the problems put before them. Overall, the students had a memorable experience and all are thoroughly excited about the chance to develop their skills on the next camp in Year 3. 

This term, Year 5 has been hard at work studying all things ‘natural disasters’. We have learnt about how these can occur – from earthquakes, to tsunamis, to tornadoes, to hurricanes and to droughts. We have learnt how these disasters are measured and the impacts that they can have, all around the world. Specifically, we have begun looking at bushfires in Australia and we are beginning the process of creating resources that address the driving question: “How can our community prepare for, respond to and/or recover from catastrophic bushfire events?” With the creative minds we have in Year 5, there are sure to be many wonderful ideas proposed.

Alongside this, we have been reading the novel ‘Hotaka’, which tells the story of a young boy who survived the Japanese tsunami of 2011. We were fortunate to have a Zoom session with the author of the novel, John Heffernan, where we had the opportunity to ask any questions we had about the novel, his writing process and even about Japan itself. Immersing us further into Japanese culture, we were able to participate in a wonderful Furoshiki workshop which was run by The Japan Foundation. Here we learnt the Japanese art of wrapping with cloth, so parents, please feel free to employ us for all future gift-wrapping needs!

We are just over halfway through the term, and with so much done already, we can’t imagine what the rest of the term holds for us – rest assured though, it is jam-packed and lots of fun!

Year 5 and Mrs Holgersson, Ms Paton and Mr Nunura