Term 3 Week 5

Planning the plan…

There comes a moment when inevitably leaders get a sense that now is the time to roll up their sleeves to tackle some of the “big stuff”. The cue is often when things align and there’s a sense that people are already starting to take that journey. Gauging that readiness is indicated by positive signals from key stakeholders.

For our staff, it is when they are indicating to the leadership team:

• that they’d like to see the plan moving forward
• that they have ideas about what we might do next and are sharing their thoughts on how we can solve the bigger issues because they’re engaged, and
• they are letting leadership know when they are feeling nervous or wary so their concerns may be addressed, indicating they feel safe to do so.

For our parents, it is when they are showing a desire to engage with the experiences the School provides which can come from:

• strong attendance at recent subject information or parent education evenings
• providing constructive feedback through our online surveys for sport and events, and
• a willingness to come forward and have conversations with key staff so we may work together to address concerns and/or share ideas with how we can together support their child.

For our students, it is about

• observing behaviours, actions, attitudes in class, and in the playground
• informally asking through a range of channels about their day-to-day engagement with what is on offer, and
• seeking formal feedback such as what happened this week where our Student Captains from the Junior School and the Senior Campus met with the School Board to give a presentation updating them on student life across the school. They reflected upon, and celebrated, many highlights of school life and student engagement, and importantly, included a good dose of feedback about what needs to be improved upon moving forward. We all listened closely, and I can assure you, we will act.

I have been grateful to those members of our broader community who have taken time to meet with me, or have written letters about their hopes and vision for the school. I am reliably informed and thoroughly encouraged that the conversations about Grammar are positive.

These indicators tell me that together we are listening and working to support our students to give them the best education possible. As a united community, we are writing the next chapter of Grammar, together. I am also keenly aware we are still not getting everything right and we are owning our mistakes. There is still work to be done. But we are ready for the development of our purposeful next steps.

A key piece of work is going to be our Strategic Plan for 2023 – 2028. Senior Leadership have held two planning days over the last two terms and worked with staff to not only present ideas, but seek feedback and information which is shaping our thinking. We have consulted with different groups of students and parents to work on emerging programs in the Senior School. We have identified the objectives we believe we need to address and will need to be tested.  These are important actions and conversations.

But before we go too far, we are checking in on our purpose as a School. For many it would seem there is an obvious and assumed answer “to educate”. For the leadership team the question of purpose was underpinned by a further three questions of intent:

• Is our purpose profound?e. we must be able to offer an education that provides great insight and understanding for our students
• Is our purpose enabling our students to experience an optimal life?e. we must be able to offer an education that enables individuals to be their best, and to be effective in all that they do
• Is humanity embedded in our purpose? e. we must be able to offer an education that makes explicit the power of “others before self”.

In light of these questions our proposed Purpose Statement which we are now asking students and their families, the Board, our staff and our community to offer feedback on is currently simply expressed as

“At Launceston Grammar we exist to nurture, inspire and challenge young people to lead good lives and make the world a better place.”

Does this work for you as a parent or community member of Grammar? The leadership team would love to hear your feedback because it matters to us that we get this right.

Education in whatever form it takes is, and always will be, the key to life success. We have a great opportunity to continue to create and grow a great education at Launceston Church Grammar School.

Books, books, and more books.

Over the last two weeks we have celebrated both Science Week and Book Week. I often reflect that we can take for granted the importance of these two events. Our ability to reflect on the world in which we live through the lens of science and the written word. We can easily take for granted the great gift that is education. A gift that is still in many parts of the world denied to many.

Some years ago, I was fortunate enough to walk past the house that Galileo was held in under house arrest in Florence. He was fortunate; many of his contemporaries were burnt at the stake for daring to challenge the belief that the sun rotates around the earth and not vice versa. The scientists were labelled heretics and paid the ultimate price. No such thing as Q&A in 15 Century Florence! How the world has changed since then. In the 15 Century only the elite could read, write, and enjoy the arts. Today, knowledge is valued not guarded.

Teaching scientific literacy is the friend of reason. It removes burning at the stake from the picture as it encourages rational, empirical based discussion. It promotes understanding our world and the impact we have on it. It explores sustainability and recycling and the living planet we call home. It takes us to the moon and back, it delves the deepest oceans and the smallest cells, it illuminates, it highlights, it gives breathe to our thoughts. The great French scientist Louis Pasteur summed it up beautifully:

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.

Simply put, I believe, that the principle of scientific thought gives rise to intelligent thinking processes and a reasoning that extends to all aspects of life. To understand why we do the things we do, why things are as they are. I hope you can have a discussion with your children about what they did in science at school this week. Hopefully not too much havoc and mayhem were caused in labs, but much havoc and mayhem in how they thought.

Similarly with books. When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, he bought the gift of learning to the masses. He gave so many the opportunity to learn, to spread ideas, to be taken on a magical journey to faraway lands and fabulous places. He enabled us all to share the beautiful language of Yeats, Wordsworth, and Shakespeare.

I am grateful for those that have enabled me the chance to express an opinion based on scientific premise not ignorance. For those that have taken me on journeys in the wonderful world of literature.

I will leave you a thought from the great champion of science Professor Julius Sumner Millar:

The intellectual process must be stirred. A feeling for knowledge for its own sake must be engendered. Learning will then be an exciting adventure which few can escape, nor will many wish to. And it will bring the spirit to a great awakening which can likely last a lifetime.

Nick Foster

Head of Senior Campus

Dear Hawkes Boarding Families and Grammar Community,

As we reach the halfway point of Term 3, I’d like to reflect on the opportunities our boarders are provided with. In our Hawkes Boarding House, we as staff try our best to engage with our Boarders and to make their experience in their home away from home as enjoyable as possible. But this experience and the opportunities our Boarders are provided with are only as good as they make it. I can confidently say that our Boarders make the most of every opportunity provided to them. The gratitude they show, along with the joy in their faces when we do an activity as a group makes this such a special environment to be a part of and I am forever grateful to be part of this amazing family.

We have had an action-packed fortnight in the Hawkes Boarding House which started off with a trip to UTAS stadium to watch Hawthorn take on the Bulldogs. Everyone enjoyed the game, except maybe for Skye and Mr Murphy who were both disappointed by the result. Better luck next time!

With the winter slowly coming to an end, we’re making the most of our fire pit to get through some of the cold nights. However, we discovered a few students that might need to be kept away from the fire.

The Boarders watched the big World Cup Semi Final together and it was amazing to see the support for the Matildas by everyone in the Boarding House. The result didn’t go our way, but the students made sure it was an enjoyable evening…or they just enjoyed not having to go to bed at their normal time.

Last Friday our Grade 10, 11, and 12 students had the opportunity to dress up for the annual Boarders’ Ball hosted by Scotch Oakburn College. Mark and his team did an amazing job to provide some snacks for the Boarders and their partners before we drove over to Scotch. It was an enjoyable evening, topped with a trip to Maccas on the way home afterwards.

A group of Boarders went to Lilydale falls with Miss Clarke to make the most of the warmer weather last Sunday. What an awesome way to end the weekend. This was followed by national book week – a photo speaks a thousand words so all I can say is that Barbie has somehow managed to become a top-selling book. And to top it all off, our junior boarders made the most of our tech-free Tuesday by doing some gardening, while some of the senior students baked some muffins for everyone to enjoy.

I just want to remind you all that next weekend is a long weekend with Friday the 1st of September a student-free day. That is also the day I submit my PhD thesis and I’d like to thank all of the Hawkes families who have been patient with me over the last few months while I took slightly longer to respond to some of your messages or calls. The Boarding House WILL STAY OPEN for any students unable to go home on Thursday afternoon. I will be supervising the students during the day on Friday and from 3pm onwards we have our normal staff on duty as per usual.

I hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend.

Kind Regards,​

TJ Pieters

One reason why we need parent and community support with Sony Camp

I was once a Chaplain to the NSW Police Force. I served people who were dealing with some appalling stress and trauma and learned a powerful life lesson that still influences how I understand my own life challenges and those I see in others. The lesson is this, people deal best with challenges when they exercise agency.

The nature of that agency might take the form of making choices in how to act and having influence on events, or it could be acting as a physical rescuer or calling on previous training. In any case, it is a demonstrated fact that, exercising agency in challenging events reduces the psychological impact of trauma.

This has many applications in my role as a chaplain to our students. I would like to highlight one of them by explaining why I have committed to help the Grammar Sony Camps continue.

As many as 40 of our students have already volunteered to serve in some capacity in our Christmas Camp being held 15-17 December this year. They are choosing to undertake training and to act with agency and influence by providing respite for families and carers who are living confronting and challenging lives all the time.

These students are right now acting out, and practicing – Agency, a way of living that makes them reliable agents of good in difficult circumstances, who understand how to take on hard things and to make an immediate and long lasting difference for others. It is education and action at its best.

For the 15-17 December 2023 Grammar Sony Camp to go ahead this year we need parent and community volunteers – especially in the fields of:

If any of these positions interest you, please contact me on 0431135223 or mpickering@lcgs.tas.edu.au.

Rev. Matthew Pickering

School Chaplain

Student Wellbeing and Learning: Investigating NAPLAN Outcomes 

Student wellbeing and learning outcomes are inextricably linked. We have known this intuitively for decades, with pastoral care taking many forms and relationships at the heart of education. In the past decade, we have increasingly had data to support this. 

For instance, one study across 96 Australian schools showed that introducing mental health initiatives enables students to move 6 months ahead in their NAPLAN results (Dix, Slee, Lawson, and Keeves, 2012). In another recent study on 3,400 Grade 7 to 9 students, happier students scored 2 points higher on their NAPLAN maths results, and those who identified as not depressed received reading scores 2.5 points higher and maths results 3 points higher than their peers; these effects also remained in place 7-8 months later (Cardenas et al., 2022). 

Wellbeing takes many forms, and for this newsletter item we thought it pertinent to reflect on some evidence-based ways students can take responsibility of their own learning by improving their brain wellness through habit formation. 

A habit can be defined as any regularly repeated behaviour that requires little or no thought and is learned rather than innate (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Some helpful habits for learning include introducing regular study blocks, drinking lots of water, engaging in physical activity, eating nutritious food, and getting sufficient and high-quality sleep. 

Two effective ways of building habits include: 

• “Habit stacking”: Tying the new preferred habit to an existing habit. For instance, if you are trying to introduce a regular meditation practice into your life to feel more present with your learning and avoid rumination loops, perhaps you tie this to brushing your teeth. Then, twice a day when you brush your teeth, you might choose to listen to a guided mindfulness, or even just practice feeling your feet on the ground and feeling the toothbrush at its various angles in your mouth. While this may sound disconnected from learning, evidence has shown that those who practice mindfulness regularly reduce the negative effects of stress of their brain, thus enhancing learning over time. 
• Using reminders for habits. Some notifications on our devices can serve positive functions! Ideally, we want to avoid notifications as much as possible, as evidence shows that it can take us an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to fully reengage in our learning after a distraction, such as one notification pops up on our screen/vibrates in our pocket/flashes on our smartwatch (Mark, 2008). That said, if used optimally, notifications could help remind you of important habits. For instance, could you set a notification for 7am every morning reminding you of the specific foods that are best to eat for breakfast? Foods that are low GI and high in Omega 3s have been shown to improve brain health and sustain concentration for longer throughout the day, thus enhancing learning. 

We are always looking to introduce evidence-based practices into our teaching and learning at Launceston Grammar, and wellbeing strategies are a critical part of this. We know that our recent NAPLAN results, a few highlights of which are included below, reflect our ongoing commitment to both high quality teaching and learning AND wellbeing. 

As a reminder, NAPLAN introduced a new scale in 2023. Students’ results will show how they performed in each of the NAPLAN assessment areas against 4 new proficiency levels: 

• Exceeding: The student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing 
• Strong: The student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing 
• Developing: The student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing 
• Needs additional support: The student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily. 

Individual student reports have been sent out in the post along with an information sheet about these new proficiency levels. 

A snapshot of NAPLAN highlights: 

• 100% participation rate across all Grade 7 and 9 tests, in comparison to the Australia averages of 94.02% in Grade 7 and 89.08% in Grade 9 
• 77.2% strong + Mathematics results for Grade 9 compared with 76% in similar schools and 54% in Tasmanian schools 
• 16.4% exceeding outcomes in Grade 7 Writing, compared with 15.3% in similar schools and 10.2% in Tasmanian schools 
• Significant amount (29%) of high relative gain in Grade 7 Spelling for students moving through from our Junior Campus, compared with similar schools and Tasmania’s average (both 25%) 

• 72.3% of strong + Writing results for Grade 9, compared with the Australian average of 58%. 
• 80.2% of strong + Reading results for Grade 9, compared with the Australian average of 62.8%. 

We look forward to conducting further analysis and continuing to work through this information to improve our practice and better support all our students. 

Sarah Shepherd 

Co-Director of Teaching and Learning 

Dear Kinder, Prep, Grade 1 and 2 parents,

As an Early Primary team, we are learning, applying and teaching “best practice” approaches in teaching reading. To mark National Literacy and Numeracy Week and also given this is a critical time for laying strong foundations in Literacy, we would like to invite you to an information session where we will detail some of the following;

• How do children learn to read and spell?
• Strong Beginnings – Language Comprehension/ Phonological Awareness/ Speech and Auditory health
• Home Learning/ Home Reading and our top recommendations
• Learned Words, What is a Decodable Reader and how is it different?
• Where does Comprehension fit when we teach young children reading
• General Grade level expectations – moving away from “levels”
• Responding to individual learning in Reading and Spelling at the Junior Campus

This will take place on Wednesday 13th September, 9-10 am. The location will be the Junior Campus and the exact room will be communicated closer to the date.  Our presentation of topics will take us 30-40 minutes with some time at the end for questions.

Thank you,

Sarah Williams, Georgia Grieg, Krystal Bassano, Veronica Savage and Kelly Armstrong.

Over the past months students have conveyed to us that they would like a wet weather garment better suited to Tasmanian winters. Students have also indicated that when there is a high wind chill they are cold .The current soft shell black jacket is wonderful, however is not internally lined for warmth. The School worked with our uniform supplier, Noone, and trialled a variety of different jackets. A number of  samples were  produced and student, staff and parent  feedback was sought. As a result of this process Noone will be suppling an additional, optional jacket through our Uniform  Shop for purchase.

To accommodate different sizing issues there will be slight differences in the jacket available for Junior Campus students. Grade 5 and 6 students will have the option of either jacket as size appropriate. The new garment  will not replace the current soft shell jacket, rather be another option as weather appropriate. It is designed to be worn as an outer garment to and from School, at School and at sporting events.

The Senior Campus coat will retail for $110 and the Junior Campus coat for $60. They are currently in production and will be available in 4 weeks. 

Uniform Committee

We will be convening a uniform committee to consider feedback around the current uniform. Our first consideration will be the design of shorts for girls. If you would like to be part of this group please let me know via email at nfoster@lcgs.tas.edu.au

In the last week of Term 2, 19 students from all TCE art classes (Art Studio Practice, Visual Arts, Media, Photography and Art Theory) had the opportunity to travel to Sydney for a three-day art trip accompanied by Mr Paul Snell and Mrs Clare Farrell.

We began the trip meeting bright and early at the Launceston Airport, ignoring the fact we were delayed by several hours. When arriving in Sydney, we dropped our bags off at the hotel and ventured our way down to Circular Quay to the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art Australia) where we did a self-guided tour throughout The National and the MCA collection, which was a great way to be immersed into the art scene in Sydney.

Day two we began at The Art Gallery of New South Wales (South building), doing our own self-guided tours throughout many exhibitions such as Grand Courts, 20th-century galleries, brick vase clay cup jug, Asian Lantern and Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2023 which was a huge highlight for many. In addition, we visited the North Building which included a self-guided tour of Dreamhome, Laurence Edwards, Outlaw, Yiribana Gallery and Making Worlds which was a very intriguing way to finish the morning. We finished the day off at NAS (National Art School) where we were guided through their current exhibition called ‘Occurrent Affair’ which many enjoyed and indulged strong thoughts and opinions on current issues and problems in our day and age. Lastly for the day we went to Gallery9 where Mr Snell promised us there would be a piece of his work there but then proceeded to tell us it was “packed away out the back”.

Our last day began at the White Rabbit Gallery where we did a self-guided tour through, I AM THE PEOPLE, which was a massive highlight and meaningful gallery that many were inspired by and did not want to leave. Next stop was Nanda Hobbs where we were privileged to have a guided tour by gallery director Ralph Hobbs (who used to teach in the Art Department at LCGS) through ‘Shadow Lands’ and ’Suppression Order’ where we were also lucky enough to have artist Brandon Snape talk to us about his exhibition which offered a great insight into his works. Lastly, we finished up at Brett Whiteley Studio in Surry Hills, which was incredible as the studio was the workplace and home of Whiteley (1939-1992). We were given the unique opportunity to experience the atmosphere of the studio for ourselves which was a huge eye opener for many.

Along with the many galleries we visited as a group, we were also given many hours of free time to do our own thing as smaller groups such as shopping, dinners and hanging out at the pool or in each other’s rooms making the most of the trip away to Sydney.

The opportunity for this trip would not be able to happen without the support of the school and our parents, which we are very grateful for.

Written by Stella W., Skye E., Mia B., and Josh F. (2023 Art Captains)

We are currently working on the soil quality in our school Agricultural Plot. If you have spare manure and would like to donate some to the project, please contact Vahid Rahimi.

Email: VRahimi@lcgs.tas.edu.au, Ph. 63366000.

Thank you.

RSVP here: https://www.trybooking.com/CKRHP

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Melbourne Reunion – 17 November

Combined Reunion – 15 December