Hello Parents /Guardians and Community Members,

We are now over halfway through the term and have commenced the new academic year for our compressed curriculum. Students are settling into their new year and our senior students are all commencing their senior subjects. Our previous Year 10 cohort of students are now commencing their first senior year, and we hope are more informed and prepared after having attended our new program the ‘Successful Seniors’ last week. More details and photos of this program are below.

Narrandera Shire Council & Narrandera TAFE Partnership Providing Workplace Training Courses to Year 12 Students – RSA, RCG, & Barista Training

Thank you to Narrandera Shire Council in partnership with TAFE Narrandera, our Year 12 graduates have now completed their fully subsidised mircrocredentials and are well set up to assist them gain employment. Courses included:

First Aid
Responsible Service of Alcohol
Responsible Conduct of Gaming
Barista

Once again, I wish to thank the generosity of the Narrandera Shire Council as well as Fee Smith of Narrandera TAFE, for their tireless support of the youth of Narrandera.

Year 10 Work Experience & Successful Seniors Week – Last week

Last week we implemented a newly designed program to support our Year 10 students to transition into their senior years. Our students could choose if they were intending to undertake employment opportunities and attend work experience, or they could stay at school for our inaugural ‘Successful Seniors Program’.

Option 1 Work Experience

Students who went out on work experience were well supported and we are incredibly grateful at the amazing opportunities provided by our host employers who hosted students last week for work experience. We are pleased to say several students were offered employment/apprenticeships from this program. Thank You Employers and Businesses of Narrandera and Leeton!

Option 2 Successful Seniors Program:

Many of our year 10 students elected to stay at school and undertake the newly developed program called ‘Successful Seniors’.

This new initiative held last week, was designed to support our year 10 students to have a smooth, supported and informed transition into the start of their seniors’ studies. To help guide and support our students as they navigate the change from junior school to senior school and commence their senior studies, our newly developed ‘Successful Seniors’ program incorporated the following sessions:

Formal introduction to NESA requirements and the structure of the HSC
Senior Assessment requirements
12 guest speakers and Narrandera Staff gave up their time to chat to students about their varied careers and experiences. THANK YOU!
All My Own Work (a compulsory program to education students on referencing, plagiarism and academic writing)
Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing – Guest Speaker ‘Chooka’ Josh Hanlin was truly inspirational. Thank you Chooka and Mrs Lucas for this amazing talk.
Beginning a career – Alana Kilmartin of ‘Unserious Careers came up from Melbourne especially for Narrandera High School and was very engaging and had great advice for students.
Study Skills and habits for senior students & looking after your health and wellbeing.
STEM – Bridge Building Competition encouraged teamwork, communication, problem solving & lateral thinking skills. This was surprisingly competitive and fun to watch the teams compete!
Ms Maddison went to great lengths to design an amazing scavenger hunt challenge. Students had to solve the riddle, identify the staff member, solve a challenge with that key staff member before they could move on to the next clue. By far this was the highlight of the week.
The week culminated in an excursion to Griffith on the Friday where we visited the Country Unis Centre & then switched off with some fun Ten Pin Bowling, arcade games and a pizza lunch.

I wish to thank all the wonderful staff of Narrandera High School who helped run these programs, shared their expertise and those staff and guest speakers who shared their unique career journeys. We hope this has allowed our year 10 students to transition into year 11 with more knowledge about the structure and requirements of NESA and the HSC and with the tools they need to succeed as senior students.

Girls On Fire – Tuesday 26th November at Narrandera VRA depot

Next week a small group of female students will have the opportunity to attend the Girls On Fire Program, which introduces them to the careers and pathways in the Emergency Services, such as firefighting, emergency management and responses, communications and logistics. This should be a wonderful day for our students, and we will have more details and photos to come next newsletter.

TAFE YES Construction Next Session - Week 9 (9th-13th December)

Fee Smith at Narrandera TAFE has once again managed to provide our students with the opportunity to learn more about Construction through the TAFE YES program. This will be a one-week intensive course where students will be TAFE students for the week and will build a project and build skills in the Construction trades.

We look forward to this upcoming program for our students.

Mrs Judy Ing

Careers Adviser

Homework & Study Centre