Volume 26 Issue 29 20 Oct 2017 30 Tishri 5778

From the Principal

Finally, I get a chance to say welcome back to Term 4! It feels like an age since our last Ma Nishma – I hope you’ve missed it over the past four weeks. Now that all of the High Holy days are over and the school holidays finished it’s full steam ahead for the next eight weeks of the year. There’s so much to do for us all, with examinations, assessments, reports, planning for 2018 and much more.

Staff Development Day

All of our staff members were very privileged to be able to hear Dr Jordan Nguyen as our guest speaker for our Staff Development day on 9 October. The day focused on using ICT to enhance learning. Jordan has been on ABC Catalyst, showing how he has helped a 13-year-old boy with severe cerebral palsy fulfil his lifelong dream of driving a car. Jordan led a team who developed the technology whereby the boy could steer the car with movements of his eyes. Jordan also showed us some of the advances in virtual reality, which are having great success with helping quadriplegics bear their weight and learn to walk again. It was an inspiring morning, seeing Jordan’s passion, enthusiasm and never-give-up approach to finding technological solutions for helping people with disabilities. He had many thought-provoking quotes, such as: ‘Today we are seeing the fastest rate of change that has ever existed … and the slowest rate of change that will ever exist in the future’.

After the keynote there was a range of workshops and presentations on all sorts of technology and education-related initiatives and programs. These were presented by a mix of external experts and staff members, and included sessions on Reshet, Google docs and forms, iMovie, edQuire laptop monitoring software, Clickview, online subscription resources, SeeSaw and Virtual and Augmented Reality. A huge thank you goes to Garry Case, Zoran Taleski and the IT department for their organisation and management of this very successful learning day for our staff.

 HSC Examinations

Our Year 12 class of 2017 has been preparing for these for some time and the exams finally began this week. Each week over the exam period, I will give you a brief comment on the papers, brought to you by our Heads of Department or teachers of the subject.

English

Here are some thoughts on the English Advanced and Standard Papers:

Paper 1:

In general, this was an accessible and straightforward paper. The students felt confident with their responses. The questions were drawn from the syllabus information and so the concepts were quite familiar to the students. The Section 1 comprehension texts were good, though one poem was a little challenging and lacking in obvious techniques so students had to think hard for that question. 

Paper 2:

Both Advanced and Standard Paper 2 were more challenging than Paper 1, with the Module B questions for each being particularly challenging and requiring a lot from the students. The Module A and Module C questions were more straightforward, though not without challenge. Students felt confident about Module A and C but less so about Module B. 


PDHPE

The Year 12 PDHPE students were very happy with the paper, with all of the group describing it as “very fair”. The multiple-choice section (20 marks) was very good. The Core 1 and 2 section (40 marks) was good but as is often the case in such a broad subject, there are many parts of the course that were not assessed (eg. Ottawa Charter, health promotion initiatives etc), which is always a little disappointing having spent so much time learning them. The final option section of the paper (40 marks) was very good for us, as I know the students had covered the content tested in detail. So overall it was a positive examination experience for the 2017 Year 12 PDHPE class.

Acknowledgement of staff

On our Staff Day we also honoured those staff members who have attained 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 years of service to Emanuel School. We congratulate and sincerely thank the following teachers and support staff members for their commitment to our School and students over the years:

5 years: Kobi Bloom, Holly Dillon, David Gwilliam, Simon Hamilton, Alice Henry, Sarah Jenkins, Heather Marshall, Jillian McCormick, Claire Pech, Genevieve Radnan, Diana Springford, Kim Woolf

10 years: Santiago Alfaro, Daniel Burley, Andrew Delany, Tany Milner

15 years: David Bartlett, Peter Cummins, Marlene Einfeld, Lynn Joffe, Allison Lee, Alexandra Levy, Christine Rogers, Kim Slender, Lisa Starkey

20 years: Tina Greenhill

25 years: Sandy Lipworth 

Mazal Tov to

  • Aaron Ellis-Bloor (Year 11), who was recently awarded a Distinction for his performance in the LMusA Examinations on the saxophone. To achieve a result like this is remarkable at any age, but particularly for a 16 year old. The National pass rate is typically only 10% at this level of examination, and in NSW a maximum of one or two candidates for LMusA on saxophone each year will get a Distinction or Pass. This is an amazing achievement and a credit to Aaron’s hard work over the year in preparation for this very rigorous examination.

    Aaron Ellis-Bloor – Year 11 -2017

  • Sonia Redman (Year 11), who was in the Grand Final of the Mikolot Public Speaking competition at the end of last term and came a very creditable second.
  • Daniel Melamed, (Year 7) who won Sydney Spring One-Day Tournament in Chess
  • Jonathan Schach (Year 8) who was promoted to a Patrol Leader of his Clovelly Scout Troop, leading a troupe of 6
  • Brody Elbourne (Year 7) for his achievement in the Blackmores 3.5 km run, coming 5th overall and second in his age group
  • BJ Shapiro (Year 7), for his part in the success of his basketball team, the Sydney comets, who came second in the national competition
  • Oskar Beck (Year 10) for his third place in Javelin at the CIS Athletics
  • Danielle Rutstein (Year 9) for her 7th place in the high jump at the CIS Athletics
  • All the ICAS and AMT winners (see the pages in this bulletin detailing the winners)
  • Rabbi Siegel and all the students who participated in the Sukkah Dinner with the refugees last week (I commend this article to you in this bulletin – it contains some beautiful words from the refugees and our students, parents and teachers who took part).

Coming up

  • King David School Exchange, Sunday 22 October – Monday 23 October
  • KDS Exchange Concert, Monday 23 October, 4:10 pm, MPH
  • Year 6 Testing for Year 7 2018, 25 October
  • The Shabbat Project, 27 October
  • World Teachers’ Day, 27 October (say thanks to a teacher on this day!)
  • High School Jilkminggan trip, Sunday 29 October – Friday 3 November
  • High School Parent Wellbeing evening, Monday 30 October, 6pm
  • P & F Camping Trip, 3 – 5 November

 Quote of the week 

From C K Prahalad, on leadership:

‘Let me use a metaphor. I look at good leaders as sheepdogs. Good sheepdogs have to follow three rules. Number one, you can bark a lot, but you don’t bite. Number two, you have to be behind: you cannot be ahead of the sheep. Number three, you must know where to go, and you mustn’t lose the sheep.’

Best wishes for an enjoyable and relaxing weekend.

Shabbat Shalom