Anne Hastings – Principal

New staff member in Music

This week we welcomed Yosiah Oshiro to our School and Music department. He is replacing Susan Longney till the end of this year and teaching all of her classes. Yosiah (Yoshi) comes very highly recommended and, although in the early years of his teaching career, has had considerable experience with leading ensembles as well.

Announcing … our fourth House!

Given the increased enrolment in our High School, we will be moving to a fourth House during 2018. We have much planning to do to put this in place by the second half of 2018, since the process of selecting the House name, colours, student leaders and members is quite considerable. We’ll give you more details later this year about our plans.

Reminder re student absence

Please email absence@emanuelschool.nsw.edu.au or telephone 8383 7311 by 8am on the morning of an absence or when requesting early leave or late arrival. For longer absences please email the Head of Primary, Tany Milner for K-6 students (nmilner@emanuelschool.nsw.edu.au) or the Deputy Principal, Margaret Lowe for 7-12 students (mlowe@emanuelschool.nsw.edu.au)

Please DO NOT use individual staff members’ email addresses in case the staff member you email is not present on the day you make a request for early leave or notification of late arrival.

Academic Courage

This is an excerpt from the topic I discussed at Assembly this week with our students, adapted from ‘The importance of academic courage’ by Ron Berger, in Edutopia:

“We know what the word ‘courage’ means and all of us are courageous in some areas and not in others. Some people have mountain-climbing courage but no public-speaking courage. Soccer courage is different from musical courage. We can all work on our courage where we need it.

Think about your own courage in the academic sphere. There may be a need to work on your science courage, your art courage, or your Shakespeare courage. Beyond high-level mathematical courage, students could be specifically working on their fractions courage, their integers courage, or their calculus courage.

What does having academic courage actually mean in a particular area? It means you don’t hide in class, pretending you understand things when you don’t, or pretending you’re too cool to care about the work. It means you take the risk to raise your hand and ask questions, to share your thinking with others, to take critique from peers. It means having the courage to choose difficult problems and risk mistakes. Learning happens with these actions, and so developing academic courage enhances learning.”

Wellbeing evening, Monday 30

This was a very successful evening, attended by a large number of parents who were engaged by each of the speakers about a range of student wellbeing initiatives. We are very grateful to Margaret Lowe for her organisation of this evening, as well as Shauna Lore and the Wellbeing team for their support and contributions.

New Gate for Waxman Drive

Over the coming holidays we will be installing a new gate system at the main entrance to the campus (corner of Avoca and Stanley Streets). The Communal Security Group (CSG) has recommended that we upgrade our security at this main entrance. When the students return at the beginning of 2018, the new gate and more secure system of entry into the School will be completed.

HSC Examinations

Our comments on the recent HSC examinations papers continue:

 Mathematics

The Advanced Mathematics HSC paper covered most topics at a good level. The multiple choice was kinder than in previous years with just the last 2 questions requiring a deeper understanding. Questions 11 and 12 tested basic knowledge of key concepts, although the question on the Parabola was presented in a different way. Question 12 was very straightforward with no tricks. Question 13 contained some scaffolding that helped students find a starting point with more in-depth questions. In Question 14, Simpson’s Rule was presented differently to other papers and students found this difficult to understand. The dreaded Finance question used a combination of both a superannuation idea and loan repayment together and some students found this difficult. Question 16 contained a Maximum/Minimum question and a Similar Triangle question which is typical of the last question in previous papers. Both proved to be challenging questions.

In summary, there was ample opportunity for students to show their knowledge in Questions 11 to 14, despite the last 2 questions being more challenging.

Alice Henry

Studies of Religion

This examination did not contain a lot of surprises in the short and extended answer sections, but did have several multiple-choice questions that were challenging. A few of these questions did not seem to have a clear solution, and the answers debated in the chatroom sites have been inconclusive. For the written questions, all of the topics had been covered in class and in practice papers, so the students felt confident about their responses. Some of the questions contained stimuli and/or language that could be misinterpreted, but the Emanuel religionists had practised a variety of unusual questions and seemed well equipped. The biggest concern was for students who had chosen Judaism as their main religion, since the question contained more of a Christian rather than Jewish focus on love. This situation has happened before, so our students were aware of this possibility. The students who had chosen Islam were more confident, since the topic was their favourite – Hajj – and offered a reasonable opportunity for them to shine. Overall, the students were pleased with their written responses and hopeful for a good result.



Elena Rosin

Software Design and Development 

The examination had some interesting questions for the students to work through, asking them to consider the nature of concepts rather than demonstrate their application. One question asked students to explain how modifying the length of elements in a floating point number would affect the numbers that can be represented and required a good understanding of the mechanics of floating point numbers. There was a strong focus on algorithms which was good to see but it did mean that other sections of the syllabus were not tested. The problems required to be solved by the algorithms were varied but there were no surprises in terms of tricky processing. Overall this was a fair examination.

Ryan Chadwick

Parent Safety Group

Each week we will mention the PSG volunteers who have helped ensure the safety of our students by completing a shift on campus. Please see the Parent Safety Group page for this week’s group of very appreciated volunteers.

Mazal Tov to

• Danielle Rutstein (Year 9), who was a finalist for the fourth consecutive year for the Bradley Matthews Memorial Award for Sporting Excellence 2017 we attended the Randwick Council Sports Awards
• Adena Sheps (Year 10) for her entry ‘Off leash, now what?’ which has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Youth Category of the 2017 GreenWay Community Photography Prize
• The gymnastics teams and individuals for their strong showing at the recent gymnastics competition (see the page in this newsletter for more details)
• The three Rugby 7s teams for their strong efforts in the recent competition
• Our Cricket team for winning their Round 1 game in the Douglas Shield competition

Coming up

• P & F Camping Trip, 3 – 5 November
• Writers’ Awards, Monday 6 November, 6:30 pm
• Year 6 into Year 7 2018 Transition Day, Tuesday 7 November
• Years 9-10 Music Soiree, Tuesday 7 November, 4:30 pm
• Year 6 World Expo, Wednesday 8 November, 6 pm
• Night of Instrumental Music, Tuesday 14 November, 6 – 7:20 pm (Primary), 7:35 – 8:20 pm (High School)
• Evening of Refugee Voices, 16 November 6 pm

Quote of the week 

‘It’s hard to overestimate the value of courage—this broader vision of courage—in education.’ [Ron Berger, Edutopia]

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Shabbat Shalom