Andrew Chisholm
Assistant Principal
Dear Students and Parents,
As we reach the end of term 2 it has been pleasing to see some of the outstanding achievements of our students.
Two of the four members of the 2018 Australian Physics Olympiad team are from JMSS. Congratulations to Boris Deletic and Vlad Mikho who will represent Australia in Portugal in August.
Angad Singh, Praneel Chugh and Ash Sapkota won the secondary school section of the Victorian iAwards recently for the invention of a device to assist researchers in regenerative medicine. Their entry now goes to the national final of these awards.
Ten of our students have received Monash Scholars awards for their outstanding academic performance in Year 10 to this point of the year. Congratulations to Dinara Fonseka, Alexandra Berry Smith, Alex Fan, Hima Sreelal, Hannah Singh, Tuyen Pham, Ashika Ramaswamy, James Pringle, Megan Robinson and Cleve Stephens.
Reports
As we reach the end of term two, our students and teachers have been exceptionally busy finalising assessments, participating in the exam process, reflecting on assessment grades and beginning semester two subjects. Students do need to appraise their individual efforts over the past month to ensure that they have learnt from the successes and challenges of the first semester, and use the holiday break to refocus their energies in a directed fashion to ensure they can achieve their personal best in second semester.
All students in all year levels will have a semester report published on Compass from early July. If a subject has been using the Learning Management System, Canvas, to provide continuous feedback, then the semester reports will not contain the traditional comments related to student achievements and areas for improvement as these have already been published in Canvas.
Semester reports are accessed on Compass via the parents login. If you have lost your login you can contact the school on info@jmss.vic.edu.au . Obviously the reports provide an excellent opportunity to assess the progress of your son or daughter in each of their subjects in relation to their own learning goals, their performance on assessment tasks and their organisation. Please take the time over the holidays to have a conversation with your son and daughter about what teachers have written about their progress to this point of the year.
Supercomputing Conference in Dallas, Texas
Thanks to the generosity of the Faculty of Computer Science at Monash University, we are once again able to send four students to this year’s supercomputing conference in Dallas, Texas.
Many students have written excellent applications to take part in this exciting opportunity and the interviews for this conference will be held in early Term 3.
Upcoming Events: Term 3
All of our staff will be participating in professional learning activities on Friday 20 July. On this day your student is not required at school.
One of the major events that the entire school will be involved in is the selection of courses for 2019. For Year 12 this means VTAC preferences for university entry and for our year 10 and 11 students, the selection of subjects for the following year. This year we are changing some of the processes around course selection and the next newsletter will contain a range of important dates relating to this including; parent information nights, course counselling meetings and information as to how these processes will operate.
To ensure that this process goes smoothly, preparation is essential. University Open Days, Pathway investigation and obtaining information from our own pathways resource centre is vital to helping your son or daughter make informed choices.
Science Immersion Day
Last Friday I was privileged to join the Year 10 students for their science immersion day at various locations around the University.
Organised by the schools of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematical Sciences, Biomedicine, Physics and Astronomy and Earth, Atmosphere and Environment and coordinated by Dr James Driscoll, students rotated through a range of activities that exposed them to cutting edge research and state of the art facilities.
Thanks to the many academics and PhD students who made this day possible.
Andrew Chisholm
Assistant Principal
John Monash Science School