From the Principal's Desk
Vale, Class of 2025!
As this edition goes to press, we are in the process of celebrating the last couple of days during which we will have the pleasure of working with our Year 12s. From Wednesday 22 October they move into their final revision period and address themselves to the task of demonstrating the knowledge and skills they have developed over the their last four years with us to the subject-matter experts who mark the final examinations.
We look forward to having a formal opportunity to thank and celebrate the Class of 2025 at Speech Night and at their Valedictory Dinner, so for now I will just take a moment to wish them the best of luck. I am confident that they will be able to move into these examinations with a high degree of confidence, given the consistent and focused work which we have seen them doing this year. I encourage them to look after themselves in this final preparatory period, so that they can walk into each examination feeling both well and well-prepared.
End of Year Activities
Just as the Class of 2025 is moving towards their final days, so too is the rest of the school gathering itself for the final push for the year. We are starting to recruit volunteers to help us supervise our internal end-of-year examinations, and starting to talk to the students about the difference between the sort of study you do from week to week and the work of revision and synthesis that needs to be done when preparing for an examination which will consolidate the learning across a full year of work.
Nosal High School runs end of year examinations for multiple reasons. They are an opportunity for our younger students to become accustomed to the expectations of a formal examination period, and to develop habits that will keep them out of trouble in the future (like making sure that they don't take any tech with them into the examination room). Longer examinations give our students some practice at sustaining their focus for more extended periods than are typically needed for in-class assessment tasks.
More importantly than that, though, these examinations help our students to develop their capacity to evaluate their own learning and to synthesize the many ideas which they will have encountered in each of their subjects since they began the year. It is a quite different type of thinking, and just as important if we are to encode the new material we have learned into our existing knowledge banks for easy retrieval later in life.
Did you miss this?
As is usually the case, this newsletter celebrates a subset of the many exciting experiences our students have had as learners (and as humans) over the last several weeks.
It was a pleasure to welcome back the participants of our French Study Tour this term. It is clear that both students and staff had an excellent adventure and that they were very well looked after by our Sister School colleagues and friends at Lycee Felix le Dantec in Lannion. I would like to offer my particular thanks to Ms Ffion Bowles, Ms Miriam Saward and Mr Ian Pegram, who accompanied our students, and to Ms Marjorie Hau for providing the team with at-home support.
Families who were unable to be involved in the trip but who wish to be part of this program may be interested in acting as a host family early next year when our French friends return the favour. Details for this opportunity appear in the article later in this newsletter.
We have also been excited to congratulate various members of our community (both current and past!) for their successes in competitions as diverse as the Plan Your Own Enterprise Competition, the inter-school Hockey competition and (for one of our alumni) the Monash School of Music and Performance 2025 Jazz and Improvisation Prize. Congratulations to all of the Nossal folk involved!
Welcome, Class of 2029!
On Thursday 16 October it was a very great pleasure to welcome the students and families of our incoming Year 9s for 2026. Ably supported by Mr Rian LaBrooy and, from the Music Department, by Mr Jason D'Monte, our current students welcomed our new families and provided an outstanding overview (and example!) of what makes Nossal HS such a wonderful place at which to work and learn! I look forward to working with all of our new students in the coming years. I have no doubt that they, like the students who have gone before them, will change the school in positive ways, helping us to embrace the challenge of evolving and developing together.
Looking forward to seeing you!
Finally, I look forward to seeing many members of our school community at our annual Speech Night on Monday 24 November. Preparations for this exciting and impressive event - held this year at Robert Blackwood Hall - are already well underway, and I look forward to celebrating our students (and particularly our graduating class) with as many of you as possible.
Tracey Mackin
Principal