Term 1, Week 7

Senior Executive

It has been a busy fortnight on the Junior Campus with our students. Many of our Inquiry units have seen students engage with the wider community to deepen their learning. This fortnight our Grade 6 students participated in Thai Chai in City Park and visited the Buddhist Institute as part of their unit of inquiry of ‘Who we are’. Students were exploring the differences between spirituality and religion and how it shapes our identity.

Our Grade 3 and 4 students visited the City Hall to meet with Launceston Mayor, Danny Gibson. The Grade 4 learning focuses on, ‘How we organise ourselves’ with a strong link to communities, laws and resources. While the Grade 3 students are learning about ‘Sharing the planet’, learning about improving well-being and participation in our community and the benefits that come from this. Mrs Bowles and Mr Brown have shared a report about their visit below.

As a new staff member of Launceston Grammar with fresh eyes, it is the links to the community that our students are involved in that stand out to me. The learning opportunities that extend outside of the classroom and the connections that students make to the real world are a strength of the learning and teaching programme here on the Junior Campus.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN is underway for our Grade 3 and 5 students. NAPLAN tests assess student knowledge and skills in Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language (spelling, grammar and punctuation), and Numeracy. The results of the tests provided information for students, parents, teachers and principals which can be used to improve student and school achievement.

NIJSSA Swimming Carnival

Our students participated in the NIJSSA Swimming Carnival on Thursday 9th March. Launceston Grammar sent a particularly strong team this year and we witnessed some excellent individual swims on the day. The team spirit shown was a credit to our school, every member of the team gave 100% in every race and we were excited to finish the day in second place! A huge achievement from our small school. A big thank you to Mr Zantuck for his work in preparing and organising the day. Thank you also to Mrs Calvert, Mrs Bassano and Mr Brown for your tireless work on the day.

Bravehearts Visit

Our students from Early Learning to Grade 2 had a visit from ‘Ditto’, the lovable lion who presents a fun and interactive show teaching students how to Keep Safe. Students loved learning through song and dance.

Dear Boarding families and wider Launceston Grammar Community,

Over the last fortnight, Hawkes Boarding House attended this year’s Relay for Life, and it was a great event for us to attend as a group and represent Launceston Grammar to show our support in the fight against cancer.

From McDonald’s for lunch, to the challenge of walking for 20 hours while having a silent disco, and making ourselves comfortable inside our tent, it was great to see the Grammar spirit displayed by our boarders. If you would like to donate to the event, please follow the following link: https://www.relayforlife.org.au/fundraisers/grammarboarding

I visited King Island with Mr Bennett and his wife to attend the King Island show. What a great opportunity to promote our school while also getting to learn a lot from Dale – including his ability to successfully drive our car on roads that were not suitable for a little Sedan!

We also had our overseas boarders in the Boarding House over the long weekend and attempted to visit Liffey Falls. Unfortunately, a wrong turn and closed roads meant we never got to see the falls and settled for a walk around the river at Deloraine, which turned into more excitement when we were greeted by this snake in the car park!

The end of the rowing season has arrived, which also means the end of 5:15 am starts for both our rowers and staff that wake them up and drive them down to the boat sheds in the early hours of the morning. The Hawkes Boarding House will head out to Lake Barrington to support our crews at the annual Head of the River. I wish everyone all the best for their races and look forward to seeing those of you who are out there on Saturday.

Next weekend will be a quiet weekend as we prepare for grade 10 camps, while time is getting less until our grade 12’s venture out on their Walkathon challenge. On Friday the 31^st of March we are planning to take the boarders to the movies, and on Saturday the 1^st of April we will be attending the AFL match between Hawthorn and North Melbourne at UTAS Stadium. The Boarding House will sponsor one of these events. If your child would like to go to either or both of these events, please get in touch with me.

Enjoy the weekend ahead.

Kind Regards,

TJ Pieters

Teaching and Learning

Learning is not just the domain of our students. An important part of our teaching practice is to model to our students, the attributes of a lifelong learner. Our teaching staff engage with professional learning opportunities to not only model these attributes, but also to enrich the teaching and learning opportunities in our classrooms. Over the next few newsletters, we would like to share with you some of our teaching staff’s ‘student experiences’. This week we include reflections from two of our teachers who have recently engaged in Theological studies.

Victoria Legg, Health and Physical Education and Christian Studies Teacher has commenced a postgraduate study in Theology:

“As teachers, we want to model what it means to be lifelong learners to our students. As such, I’ve been undertaking postgraduate study in Theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel to Sydney twice in the past six months for a couple of week-long intensive units on the Old Testament and a Foundational Theology unit, examining what the Bible says about who God is. I’m also looking forward to a preaching unit in September, which will help me develop my exegetical ability in understanding Biblical texts, and then being able to communicate this most effectively – skills which are highly valuable and transferrable into the Christian Studies classroom.”  

Head of Roff House, Rachel Pickering, recently attended a week-long professional learning opportunity in Canberra, completing a pastoral care intensive course:

“I believe transformational learning comes not from prioritising compliance, but rather, relationship. I recently had the privilege of attending St Marks Theological Centre for an intensive on Pastoral Counselling Skills. As a Head of House, my role involves a large proportion of in-depth coaching and counselling. As such, any training in developing robust relational and conversational skills in invaluable. A focus for me was how to frame conversations, skills of reflective listening, and creating rhetoric of feelings and thoughts for people who struggle to articulate themselves. I also had the privilege of attending their library, which has one of the foremost Rare Theological Book collections in the Southern Hemisphere – I saw the great legacy of education in this rarefied space – including some of the earliest translations of the Bible into English (included the 1583 Geneva translation pictured), as well as the Bible Societies collection of Australian Indigenous language translations – one of the most comprehensive records of these valuable languages. To be in this space of learning inspired me to bring back much of what I learnt – I have already be using the skills and adding my learning to Christian Studies lessons.”

We look forward to sharing more of our ‘teachers as students’ series with you.