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I am very pleased and proud to share with families and our community our External School Review recommendations and feedback. All schools must undertake an External School Review around improvement every 4 years. Our review was late Term 1 and it involved three Senior Leaders of the DoE immersing themselves for 3 days in our school, interviewing as many people as possible and doing class and school observations around “lines of inquiry”.
- How effectively is the school creating learning environments where all students are engaged, challenged and supported in their learning?
- To what extent do individual teachers monitor the progress of individual students and adjust their teaching in response to the progress that individuals are making?
Some of the Observations and strengths from the External School Review Panel
- All staff at the school identified that building positive and caring relationships was critical for successful learning. This was verified through conversations with students, staff and parents. The panel observed significant evidence that the interactions between staff, students and parents are respectful, polite and inclusive.
- The panel noted that the school places a high priority on student and staff wellbeing. The school has in place processes to provide academic and non-academic support to address individual needs. Interactions are focussed on staff and student learning and wellbeing, and on continually improving the school’s ability to meet the needs of its students and staff.
- The panel noted that all students and staff have an obvious sense of belonging. Staff, students and parents speak highly of the school. Staff morale is high and there is a happy and optimistic feel to the school.
- In discussions with staff, the panel noted that all staff and students were familiar with the school’s approach to promoting positive behaviour. The panel observed that the school’s approach was being consistently implemented in all classes across the school.
- The school has developed extensive documentation and mapped their approach to learner engagement (Tiered Response to Learner Engagement). Through this mapping, the panel noted a range of school-wide programs and approaches for students requiring specialist support.
- In a review of the school’s curriculum documentation, the panel observed that the school has over time developed a detailed and vertically aligned, sequenced plan for curriculum delivery. The panel noted that the plan together with supporting resources was documented and accessible to staff and student via CANVAS.
- The panel noted that school leaders and teachers have given a high priority to understanding and addressing the learning needs of all students in the school. The panel noted that the school has implemented a number of strategies including cross-class grouping (Toolbox and Macq Lit) in Years 7 and 8, and timetable structures in Years 9 and 10 for Literacy and Numeracy to cater for the learning needs of students and to enhance teaching and learning.
- All students in Years 7–9 identified that individual access to their iPad and their learning program through CANVAS assisted them in their learning.
Recommendations form the External School Review Panel
- Support staff to identify the key concepts, principles and big ideas within learning areas through the development of a prioritised curriculum.
- Gather and utilise student voice (agency) to inform teaching and learning to promote optimal engagement.
- Support teachers to collectively monitor the progress of individual students and adjust their teaching in response to the progress that individuals are making.
This feedback and recommendations will form a critical part of our work into the future around School Improvement.
Parent Conferences
I would like to thank all the families who managed to attend our recent Parent Conference evenings last week and again this week. We feel that these have been a wonderful opportunity for families to have deeper conversations about learning and progress and future areas for growth and improvement. If you were unable to attend or have a conversation with staff, please do not hesitate to make an alternative appointment time with those teachers that you may have missed.
School Association News
Last Tuesday evening the AGM was held for our School Association. I would like to announce that the following positions were filled:
Chairperson: Mr Tony Oetterli
Treasurer: Mrs Leah Carr
We had a wonderful turn out of parents at this meeting, followed by a General Meeting. It was great to see so many new faces.
The positions of Deputy Chairperson and Fundraising Coordinator are still vacant.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms Sue White for her work as Chairperson and advocate for our school and continuing as caretaker until the position was filled.
I wish everyone a relaxing and safe holiday and remind families that school resumes on Tuesday 20th July for students. Monday 19th July is a Student Free Day.
Warm regards
Maree
As part of our Positive Behaviour Support Program at Kings Meadows we will be acknowledging students who have been contributing positively to our learning environment. This means that they have been supporting our school wide expectations.
Respect for others, self and environment
Organisation
Commitment to learning
Keeping safe
Sensible behaviour
We would like to acknowledge the following students:
Grade 7:
Marli Hillier - For always exhibiting our ROCKS expectations.
Ali Agha Heydari - For always, ALWAYS giving 1000% and being a caring and thoughtful member of class.
Grade 8:
Jorji Dalton - For her improved organisational skills this term allowing her to demonstrate her commitment to learning.
Thomas Nicolson - For maintaining his always exemplary commitment to learning, overcoming his recent shoulder injury.
Grade 9:
Jess Hutton - For her commitment to her learning and her approach to all tasks.
Bonnie Talbot - For her conscientious approach to her studies.
Grade 10:
Marcelline Bula - For always volunteering her time to help our school community.
Anthony Dennis - For being a supportive friend and always volunteering his time to help our school community.
Celebrations
True Blue Award: Awarded to a student who exemplifies the values of KMHS and personifies the ROCKS. The recipient demonstrates dedication and commitment to their grade. They are reliable, hard-working and demonstrates compassion for their peers. They have a positive influence on their peers and work to improve school culture.
Academic Excellence Certificates - Awarded to students based upon their academic ratings taken from their mid-year report.
Outstanding Commitment to Learning Certificates - Awarded to students based on their behaviour ratings taken from their mid-year report.
Commendation Letter - Awarded to students who receive both Academic Excellence and Outstanding Commitment to Learning awards.
In our Grade assembly Friday, we will present the following awards:
Outstanding attendance - Awarded to students with a perfect attendance record. Presented in grade assembly.
Class Teacher
Class Legend – decided upon by Class Teacher
Most supportive student – as voted by peers
ROCKS – the person who displays the school wide ROCKS expectations -as voted by their peers
Grade Focus
Term 2 is coming to an end. This will mean students will be completing assignments and projects in their last lessons of their option classes. In Grade 7, students participate in two terms of all option classes. This allows students to experience a range of different subjects and furthermore, inform their decisions for full year option in Grade 8. In Grade 7, students participate in MDT, Music, LOTE, Food Technology, Art and Drama. Full year options offer an opportunity for students to opt into subjects of interest to them, or subjects that they believe may challenge them.
Important Contacts
The Grade 7 teaching team this year consists of Mrs Katie Wightman (Junior School AP), Mr Tom Hartley (Grade 7 AST), Miss Nicole Williams (Grade Leader), Mr Stuart Withington (Grade Leader) and Class Teachers:
7A - Mr Leigh Richardson
7B - Mr Taylor Neilson
7C - Mrs Storm Pooley
7D - Mrs Rebecca Glasby
7E - Mr Sam Maddern
7F - Mr Sean Stevenson
7G - Mr Nicholas Parker
A reminder about the important contacts for Grade 8 in 2021.
Assistant Principal - Mrs Wightman katie.wightman@education.tas.gov.au
Grade 8 AST - Mrs Hume kate.hume@education.tas.gov.au
Grade Leaders - Mr Battle mathew.battle@education.tas.gov.au
8A - Mr Chris Murray chris.murray1@education.tas.gov.au
8B - Mr Matthew Chatwin matthew.chatwin@education.tas.gov.au
8C - Mrs Kathleen Hodges kathleen.hodges@education.tas.gov.au
8D - Miss Grace Bannon grace.bannon@education.tas.gov.au
8E - Mrs Amy Jansen amy.jansen@education.tas.gov.au
8F - Mrs Jessica Crawford jessica.crawford@education.tas.gov.au
8G - Mrs Tracey MacFarlane tracey.macfarlane@education.tas.gov.au
Grade Support - Mr Pedersen thor.porsbro-pederse@education.tas.gov.au
Celebrations
Congratulations to our Junior House Captains and Class Leaders for their fantastic efforts this term. They are the be congratulated for being great helpers during the recent Challenge Days held here at Kings Meadows High School. The assistance they gave to the Grade 5 and 6 students allowed them to engage fully in the day’s activities and make them feel comfortable in the high school environment they will soon be part of.
Farewell Miss Males
It is with great sadness that we say farewell to Miss Males for the remainder of the year. She has accepted a leadership role at Port Dalrymple in Georgetown. In this role, Miss Males will continue to develop her leadership skills and will get the chance to interact with a wide range of new staff, students and families. It will be sad to see her leave as she is a tremendous asset to Kings Meadows High School. She is to be congratulated for taking up new opportunities and wanting to grow both personally and professionally. All of us here at Kings Meadows High School wish Miss Males the best of luck for the remainder of the year.
Grade Focus
Our Grade focus continues to be respectful communications. As part of this the Grade 8 team would like parents/guardians to discuss with their child the importance of communication and what topics are/are not appropriate to discuss within a school setting.
The following reminders were also discussed in this week's Grade assembly:
- Lockers - must be locked at all times.
- Food/eating - please wait until you are outside B Block before you start eating.
- Breakfast Club - food and drinks need to be consumed before entering B Block.
- Loitering in corridor - After you have accessed your locker head straight to class.
- After school - move directly to the location where their bus picks them up from.
- Also students who are walking or who catch a bus outside of the school gate need to leave the site.
- Mobiles Phones - Off and Away policy takes action as soon as you enter the school grounds.
- Out of class and organisation - make sure to have all necessary equipment for lessons.
- Go to the toilet in break times.
- Please ensure you are taking your Block 1 & 2 books and Block 3 & 4 books with you when getting organised for class.
Celebrations
The My Education Day conducted in week 8 was a success, with students particularly enjoying ‘project runway’ during block 5. Teachers were so impressed with the students creativity and flair designing their outfits as well as the courage of the models in displaying them.
During Term 2 teachers had been busy preparing mid-year reports. Overall, students in Grade 9 should be proud of their efforts to this point. It has been enjoyable for staff to conduct positive and highly constructive interviews with Parents/Carers about student progress and focus points for them in the second half of the year.
Grade Focus
Teachers have been focusing on maintaining high standards and expectations as the term draws to a close. Students have been encouraged to stay committed to their learning and embracing a positive growth mindset.
Celebrations
Term 2 is fast coming to an end. Last week our Grade 10’s had their open days at both Launceston College and Newstead College. Students experienced sessions in a wide range of subject areas. These sessions will help them in making some future decisions around subject choices for next year and at which college they intend to enrol. These sessions also allowed our students to make some connections with students from other schools within our community. At both of these days our Grade 10’s were fantastic, highly independent and represented our school impeccably. We are very proud of the way they conducted themselves on both days.
If parents wish to gain more information about what each college offers, both colleges have websites with videos, course selection guides and information about their campuses.
The Newstead College website link is https://newsteadcollege.education.tas.edu.au/ and Launceston College’s link is https://launcestoncollege.education.tas.edu.au/
Next term will be a very busy one for Grade 10s. Students will have the opportunity to make progress in their subjects from their reporting feedback and consolidate their learning opportunities within their subjects. In English students will be completing a novel study on “This Is How We Change The Ending” by Vicki Wakefield. In Science our students are completing a module on Chemistry. HaSS students are continuing with their study on World War 2. In HPE practical lessons students are completing an Inclusive Sports unit. In Health lessons we are undertaking work based around sexual health and relationships. Mathematics classes have our students working on nonlinear relationships and trigonometry.
At the start of Term 3 we will be handing out to students their Grade 10 Agreement letter. This letter outlines the end of year activities that will be on offer for our students and the pre-requisites we require for those agreements to be met. In preparation for this agreement we have been reinforcing the high expectations we set for our students regarding uniform, academic rigour, behaviour, and attendance.
As we are heading towards the end of this year, we have many and varied events coming up. If parents or students have any queries regarding anything please do not hesitate to contact your child’s Class Teacher, Mrs Pel (Grade 10 Leader) or Mrs Elliott (Grade 10 AST) via email or phone the school on 63431000.
Email contacts for our Grade 10 Team:
10A – Ms Karen Furley karen.furley@education.tas.gov.au
10B – Mr Mick Bent mick.bent@education.tas.gov.au
10C – Mr Andrew McLean andrew.mclean@education.tas.gov.au
10D – Mr Solomon Walker-Bowd solomon.walker-bowd@education.tas.gov.au
10E – Mrs Katie Mathews – katie.mathews@education.tas.gov.au
Grade 10 Leader – Mrs Megan Pel megan.pel@education.tas.gov.au
Grade 10 AST – Mrs Coleen Elliott coleen.elliott@education.tas.gov.au
Grade Focus
Our grade focus this term will be preparing for the transition from Grade 10 to further education. We will be setting ourselves goals that challenge us and establishing good learning behaviours and academic rigour in all classes.
Student Name: Alex Leggett
Student Class: 10A
What can you tell us about this piece of work?
This piece of work was on an article discussing Launceston’s latest crime spike.
What is your favourite thing about English?
Book or play studies.
What are you working on at the moment in English?
An essay on Macbeth.
What book are you reading at the moment?
‘Read Between the Lines’.
What is your favourite book and why?
What are some books that you would really like to read?
True crime novels as they are interesting.
Northern Tasmania Shootings Prompt Calls for Dozens More Police to Tackle Launceston Crime Spike
This article was published by ABC news on Friday 23rd April 2021 and shows the author's concern regarding the latest crime spike in Launceston. The author consults with three main leaders of the community - Albert Van Zetten, the Mayor of Launceston, Ivan Dean, a former Police Commander and Colin Riley, from the Police Association of Tasmania. These three men feel that Launceston needs more officers on the streets, special task forces for Launceston, surveillance teams and CIB (Commonwealth Investigation Bureau) teams in the region to keep people safe and reduce crime all together. The police union has called for an additional 70 officers to be immediately recurred state-wide, Mr Riley wants to bring in 33 of these officers to Launceston, Mr Dean would like a full time special operations group in Launceston and Mayor Van Zetten is urging citizens to speak up if they know anything about the shootings.
More police officers on the job will help prevent these shootings and to make people feel safe, Although more police officers will not solve the issue. You would need to get rid of crime all together for it to stop completely. It will help control the situation and instil more fear into these heinous criminals as there is more chance of them getting caught and being incarcerated. As Mr Riley has said ‘we need more investigators in Launceston to snip the crime in the bud’. I agree that we, as a state, need these additional investigators. The police force are working to their highest ability with what staff and recourses they have on hand, which is clearly not enough as out of the 12 shootings only 4 have been solved. The government needs to spend more money to solve these horrific murders because the police are over worked and need more resources.
A Special Operations Unit in Launceston is unquestionably needed as they can be on call and be at the crime scene within 10 minutes so they can try and catch the shooters red handed and stop the shootings from the source. They can then be focused on one case to stop the crimes and put a lot of resources into catching them as Mr Dean said “We need a special operations group in Launceston not just the states capital Hobart” and “the morning the shooting happened the special operations group should have been on the ground in a very, very short amount of time”. I strongly agree with these statements as they are undeniably right and a more than fair request. This big jump in officer recruitments will promote more jobs and growth to the economy. It would make sure the officers will respond in a timely manner as they must come from Hobart 2 hours away which is unexpectable.
Many residents said they are not frightened by the recent rise in gun violence, but they are very concerned that this crime spike will lead to their loved ones being in danger. Mr Van Zetten the city’s Mayor has said “It's time not to just pretend and hide away from the facts, if you know of somebody who has been involved in this in any shape or form, please help the police and their enquires, so we can get on top of it” and I feel that this is a very strong statement that really encourages the public to step forward and speak up and this really shows that Mr Van Zetten cares about the public and their safety and wellbeing of the citizens of Launceston and surrounding area. I believe we all have a responsibility as members of this community to take these crimes seriously and help the police as much as we can to stop these horrendous murders.
In conclusion, this article outlines the seriousness of the latest crime spike in Launceston and some possible ways to solve them. Three prominent Launceston citizens show their opinions and how they would fix this problem such as more police, a S.W.A.T. team and a CIB operations unit in the city. I agree with these arguments as they would reduce crime and gun violence which will be good for the state and people’s state of mind as they will not be as scared to leave their homes.
Science students cutting it up: dissections to review the structure and function of hearts and minds.
Wednesday 30 June | Progress Conferences |
Thursday 1 July | Progress Conferences |
Friday 2 July | Last day of Term 2 - School holidays begin |
Monday 19 July | Student Free Day |
Tuesday 20 July | First day of Term 3 for students |
Monday 16 August | My Education Day |
Thursday 19 August | Grade 3/4 Longford Primary Taster Day |
Tuesday 31 August | My Education Day |
Monday 6 September | Parent Information Evening No 3 (Grade 7 2022) |
Friday 24 September | Last day of Term 3 |
Monday 11 October | First day of Term 4 |
Tuesday 26 October | Grade 7 & 10 Immunisations |
Friday 29 October | Student Free Day |
Thursday 11 November | Careers on Wheels |
Thursday 18 November | Arts Night |
Thursday 25 November | Grade 7 2022 Orientation Day |
Thursday 25 November | Parent Information Evening No 4 |
Wednesday 1 December | Healthy Me Expo |
Friday 10 December | Grade 10 Graduation Dinner |
Wednesday 15 December | Last Day for Grade 10 students |
Thursday 16 December | Last Day for Grade 7, 8 and 9 students |