Principal's Report

Term 4 updates

It has been a big start to term 4 with several important events and activities including the Day of the Dead celebration held by our Spanish team yesterday as well as Year 8 mock elections last week, the outdoor education camp to the Grampians, the Week Without Violence, and excursions to Merri Creek, the Arts Centre and the PAX conference. This issue of the newsletter contains reports on a wide range of exciting learning, curriculum, and co-curricular activities that have taken place so far this term.

Congratulations to Dylan K on being accepted into the national swimming squad for butterfly. This is an exceptional achievement and a credit to his hard work and commitment. Congratulations to Esther P on placing fourth in the state in the chess state finals. Well done to Emma G and Pepper T on their recent participation in the Junior British Parliamentary Competition.

Over the next two weeks, the first VCE exams will take place for the Year 11 students who are studying Units 3 & 4 Biology and Legal Studies. We wish them the very best with these two final exams. This newsletter edition includes an important section on managing the workload of exams.

Coburg High School writing competition

The CHS writing competition is underway—thank you to Amber Partington for coordinating this event— and this year’s theme is “It’s a Conspiracy”. Submissions of writing for the competition close after Melbourne Cup Day and I look forward to reading the entries from our many talented student writers next week. I encourage as many students as possible to enter a piece of writing. For your inspiration and enjoyment, this issue of the newsletter contains some of the submissions from last year’s writing competition.

Learning to write well is an important part of a successful education. The pieces of writing from students last year (see section 2: Student Achievements) show how well they have developed in expressing their own distinct voice and writing style. This annual writing competition is an opportunity for students to continue to build their confidence in using language to express their ideas.

Writing can sometimes be difficult at first because when we begin writing something we often don’t know exactly where we are going with it. At school, students learn that one of the keys to writing effectively is to write three times: the first step is to find out what they actually think about the topic or issue; the second step is to organise those thoughts into a clearer and more cohesive order; and the final step is to express that organisation of ideas in a way that others will follow. Students learn to do this in a range of ways in their classes, including planning and brainstorming before writing, listing and mapping all their thoughts on a topic, grouping similar thoughts together, and putting those groups in an order that makes sense. From there, students also learn how to review and edit their own writing in order to make it easier for readers to follow, not just by checking spelling and grammar but also by clarifying their key points, weaving the main topics and ideas throughout their writing, deleting any misleading or needless words, and ensuring that there is a smooth transition between sentences and paragraphs.

This focus on learning to write better applies to all subjects, not just to English. Students learn various genres and types of writing across a wide range of subjects. For example, in the English curriculum, students learn how to tell a story, write poetry, respond to literary texts, and make persuasive arguments. However, they also learn specific writing genres in their Chinese and Spanish lessons, and they learn how to recount histories, write biographies, discuss multiple points of view, and make a business plan and much more in the Humanities too. In Science, students learn how to report on experiments and explain and classify specific phenomena; in PE and Health they learn how to explain and improve physical health and wellbeing; in Food Studies they learn how to write menus and create their own recipes; in Home Group they learn how to reflect on their own goals and aspirations and to prepare their own professional CV; and in the Arts students learn how to write their own interpretation and personal response to a work of art as well as how to formally critique various literature, visual art, music and drama performances. Through a wide range of subjects, students have the opportunity to learn how to plan, draft and publish their writing and to convey their opinions, perspectives and ideas with clarity, cohesion and coherence. Students also learn to develop their own personal style through their choice of words, phrasing and structure.

Of course, one of the keys to improving and enhancing our writing ability is to read frequently and widely. Our collection of new books in the library has almost doubled in the past month so I encourage students to continue to take up the opportunity to explore some of these amazing fiction and non-fiction books through the new Oliver library catalogue system. Keep borrowing and keep reading!

Student Engagement & Wellbeing Policy

This year we have comprehensively reviewed our Student Engagement Policy and it is now nearing completion. Thank you to Gary Vella for his leadership of the overall process of consultation and documentation. We have drawn on a range of feedback and input from students, parents and staff so that it reflects who we are as a school community and our overarching goals and values. This work has been underpinned by our involvement in the DET School-Wide Positive Behaviours (SWPB) initiative over the past two and a half years.

The Student Engagement Policy is particularly important because it sets out our school expectations for student engagement and behaviour, the rights and responsibilities of students, staff and parents, and brings together the various aspects of our approach to student engagement and support including restorative practices, respectful relationships, staged responses to misbehaviours, and our wellbeing supports and systems. The updated policy will be published to all students and families in November.

Thank you to the team at Xero

We recently received a donation of 48 second-hand MacBooks from the company Xero (an accounting software firm https://www.xero.com/ ) who have just upgraded their fleet of staff MacBooks. Most of their devices are no more than two or three years old and on the whole they are in terrific condition. We are incredibly grateful to the team at Xero for approaching us with this generous donation—in terms of value, even as second-hand devices, the donation is probably worth $40,000—and this effectively doubles our fleet of temporary loan MacBooks for students and staff. Our IT team are re-imaging the devices with the DET eduStar software and the devices will be in circulation soon for students or staff who need to borrow a device. A huge thank you to Xero from CHS!

Curriculum development

At Coburg High School we value collaboration and we continually strive for excellence in our learning and our work. Our teaching staff continue to put significant time and effort into developing and expanding the curriculum, particularly in the context of the new and improved learning management system: Coburg Online Google Sites (COGS). This a major project for our school and will continue into 2020 and 2021 as the existing curriculum wikis are transformed into the even more interactive COGS. Our curriculum leader, Joshua Wolter, provides an update on this curriculum work and the GANAG lesson structure in this edition.

We are continually refining our teaching practice and improving our craft through collaboration and feedback. Last week was an 'Open Classrooms Week' at Coburg High School with teachers visiting a range of classes with colleagues to see aspects of the new GANAG lesson structure in action. In addition, across the course of term 3, the whole teaching staff undertook formalised lesson observations within teams. We continue to seek student feedback through Pivot surveys which allow anonymous feedback on classes and this provides important information and data for teaching staff.

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to join two of our teacher leaders at the final day of their leadership course at the Department of Education’s Bastow Institute. Congratulations to Katherine Ryan and Lakshmi Sharma on their successful completion of this important year long state-wide program.

Sustainability, cycling, active transport and communications

At Coburg High School, we have a highly active, engaged and motivated Environmental Leadership Team of students and a strong sustainability sub-committee on school council. Step-by-step we are implementing a range of energy-saving initiatives at the school and during the holidays we completed one of our priority tasks of replacing over 200 lights around the school with more sustainable LED lighting (including the lights in the gym). Our next goal is to plan and document our overall long-term sustainability strategy and to begin the installation of solar panels on the roofs and to increase recycling around the school.

Our Cycling and Active Transport sub-committee continues to be a voice for active travel to and from school and for safe transport options and better cycling infrastructure around the school, including the completion of the Strategic Cycling Corridor around CHS, the potential introduction of a Cycling & Co. program in conjunction with Cycling Victoria, and lobbying for traffic signals to be installed at the entrance to the school on Pentridge Boulevard in order to enhance safety for the many students and staff who use that crossing.

The school council has also established a Communications Committee who are drafting a whole-school Communications Strategy and we will be seeking your feedback on that in time as well.

Thank you to all the parents, students and staff who are contributing to these important committees.

Drop off zone and no entry to the staff car park

I remind all parents and guardians that student safety is the prime consideration at all times, including drop-off and pick-up times. While most parents are using the entrance roundabout appropriately to drop off and pick up their child, there have been a number of issues with cars driving through into the main staff car park which is out of bounds for safety reasons (except for staff and for students with disabilities or injuries who have a special exemption). In some cases have even sped through the car park when there are students walking, cycling or scooting into the school along the driveway. This is an unacceptable situation and has proven unsafe for students, particularly those entering the school from Grassland Avenue. As always, we expect everyone to abide by traffic safety laws and this means no entry to the main car park, no double parking along the driveway, no blocking of drive-through traffic, and at all times abiding by the lower speed limits around the school. Thank you for your support and cooperation as we ensure that Coburg High School has the safest possible environment for the young people in our care.

Portables

There are three new portables (totalling six new classrooms) on the way to our school and the first one has been delivered and installed in preparation for next year. The portables are being installed on the north side of the school grounds behind Building A. For the time being, that section of the school grounds continues to remain out of bounds for students until construction of the portables has been completed.

Uniform

As everyone knows, the full school uniform is compulsory now and we expect all students to be wearing both top half and bottom half uniform items. It is great to see that students are in full uniform and are displaying pride in our school. The school uniform policy is available on the website and on Compass for reference and if you need support with uniform, make sure that you see or contact your sub-school leader to discuss.

First Nations Assembly Elections

As posted on our school facebook page, the Member for Pascoe Vale, Lizzie Blandthorn, recently visited Coburg High School to deliver information about the upcoming First Nations Assembly elections. All Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People who are over the age of 16 were eligible to vote. The assembly is intended to be the voice of Koorie people in Victoria in the future treaty process. The election is now over but more information about the First Nations Assembly can be found at: www.firstpeoplesvic.org

Introducing 2020 Staff

As we continue to expand as a school, the process of recruiting additional staff to the school for 2020 is well underway now. It is a pleasure to announce that the following teachers will join the Coburg High School staff next year:

Eve Lamb joins us as a Senior School Leader; Eve is an experienced sub school leader from Maribyrnong Secondary College.
Selina Dennis joins us as our new Computing, Digital Technologies and English teacher with extensive experience in schools and in working with the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) as the State Reviewer and VCE Exam Panel Chair for Computing and for English Language.
Jeanette Williams joins us as our new Food Studies teacher and brings 15 years’ experience teaching Food Studies and Hospitality and at her current and previous schools Jeanette has been a Learning Area Leader, Learning Specialist, and Leading Teacher.
Katie Radak joins us as an English and Humanities teacher and is currently the Head of House at Templestowe College and has also been a Year Level Coordinator at Mount Waverley Secondary College.
Theresa Pagon joins us from Strathmore Secondary College as an expert teacher of Maths and Chemistry and has been the VCAA Assistant Chief Assessor for VCE Math Methods and is a highly sought-after maths curriculum consultant.

Camps, concerts, exhibitions and picnics

There is a lot to look forward to across the rest of term 4 with a number of camps including the Year 8 camp, the Year 11 into 12 step-up camp, the Great Victorian Bike Ride, and the World Challenge expedition to Costa Rica. In addition we will celebrate the arts through the annual art exhibition, drama performances, and music concerts.

Thank you to the families who joined the Parents Association’s Barefoot Bowls last Sunday (picture below). We look forward to seeing as many families as possible at our annual Art Exhibition opening on Tuesday 26 November and our end-of-year concerts and dance and drama performances throughout November, as well as our family friendly and whole-school end-of-year concert picnic here at the school on Friday 6 December.

Stewart Milner

Principal

Coburg High School