Around the Senior School

Year 11 Geography

The Year 11 Geographers had a fantastic thee days away last week to Kosciuszko National Park. They investigated the Alpine environment of KNP. Student completed a transect on foot and mountain bike that covered 24 km and an elevation drop of 800m. They witnessed firsthand the environmental gradients and the changes to flora and fauna of the Alpine area, this includes the alpine, sub alpine and montane environments. 

Year 10 Chemistry Practical Test

Musical Practice begins

Students and staff are excited to begin rehearsals for Guys and Dolls. Singing is sounding fabulous !

Year 9 Art - Sea Themed Ceramic Vessels

Fresh from the kiln are some works created during a special masterclass in ceramics for Year 9 students at the end of last term. The delay in firing is largely due to the exciting redevelopment of some rooms in the Anderson building to include a dedicated Ceramics facility. The kilns are now installed and operating in their new home. 

The sea themed ceramics were produced in an intensive couple of days using slab, coil, pinch and carving techniques to create a vessel. The slips and glazes were chosen to give the impression of something pulled from the sea, either as a living creature or an object encrusted and weathered by the marine environment. These students put in an admirable effort to develop a design, construct, and then decorate them all within the two days. It looks like they learned lots and had fun! 

Cattle Team

It was a big weekend for the Kinross Wolaroi Cattle Team.  On Friday 18 March, a recent influx in interest to this co-curricular saw twenty-five enthusiastic students head to Blayney for the DPI’s annual Blayney Youth Judging Clinic.  The day is a unique event organised by Megan Dunsford at DPI, providing students with opportunities in assessing grain, wool, meat sheep and cattle.  

Presenters came from far and wide to offer students insight into their areas of expertise.  Each presentation offered students hands on opportunities to put their learning into action, where they judged grain, meat sheep cattle, and graded wheat and canola.  Their entries were marked and students who picked the winning entry were then asked to present their reasonings to the other 100 students. Year 8 students Sid Thompson and Lachie Soster both stood up and addressed the crowd – no mean feat whatsoever – well done guys!  Sid Thompson also achieved a blue ribbon (1st). 

Congratulations Sid.  But all were winners on the day.  A tired but satisfied crew returned to school with definite interest piqued in a role within agriculture in future years to come.

Saturday then saw a smaller crew of the Cattle Team rock up fresh and early to wash, dry and present two exhibits in the lightweight steer judging at last weekend’s Blayney Show.  

Apart from winning the blue and red ribbons for their class, the true success of the day was marked by the teamwork exhibited in coming together to support this first outing for our steers.  It was a fabulous day; the students enjoyed it and the cattle behaved or should I say, the kids behaved and the cattle enjoyed it!  

Students worked well together to support each other to enter Paraders judging – it was terrific to see them all work well alongside the cattle being able to do at school what they love to do at home. The first outing for cattle in the show ring is an important event and the cattle settled in well.  Next outing is Sydney Royal Easter Show in a couple of weeks.  We are looking forward to it

HICES DEBATING ROUND UP 

The debating season has kicked off for the Debating Team.  Kinross Wolaroi has a total of six debating teams in the Senior School. This year debates are scheduled online, using Zoom to stream into each school’s conference room.

 On Friday 18 March, Round One of the HICES competition was held virtually against Blue Mountains Grammar. Sadly, Senior KWS 1 and Opens KWS 1 had their debates cancelled due to the withdrawal of their opposition, leaving four teams to compete. The topics for each division posed questions regarding changes to the schooling system. All teams presented well organised arguments, however, despite the obvious skill and flair of our teams, only one was victorious on the day. The Senior KWS 2 team, Annabelle Van Wyke, Sala Ormes Smith, George Hogg, and Ollie Kraus were able win their debate, convincing the adjudicator that Community service should be mandatory for students to receive an ATAR. 

Despite only being awarded one win out of the four debates, our speakers were rewarded for their efforts in winning points of the round for Best Speaker.

Middle Division 

KWS 1 Rowan Baldwinson 1st

KWS 2 Niamh Rourke 1st 

Senior Division

George Hogg 1st

Annabelle Wyke 2nd

Sala Orme-Smith 3rd

Open Division

KWS 2 Eleanor Armstrong 3

CSU Ag Trip

On 22 march Mr Paine and Mrs Haydon organised for year 11 and 12 agriculture students to go to CSU Wagga to explore the agricultural options CSU had to offer. The students looked at accommodation, the farm, labs and teaching spaces and got to talk to lecturers about the courses, content, careers and research. 

It was a awesome opportunity for our students.