Dear Parent and Families,

December is upon us and we know that these final two weeks leading up to the holidays is always very hectic. There are many highlights at this time of the year as we recognise and celebrate the efforts and achievements of our students and the culmination of learning for 2023.  It is really important that during this busy and demanding time of year, we don’t lose sight of what is most important.  We have a number of special events coming up on our calendar including the RP Celebration Assembly, Presentation Assembly, the Grade 10 Celebration Dinner, Activities Day and Walkathon.

Transition Day and 2024 Classes

We had our transition day on Friday 8^th December with the majority of Grade 10s spending the day at Don College. Our Grade 7, 8 and 9 students spent the day with their classes for 2024. As we do have some staffing changes for next year, there is a possibility that the teachers your child had on the Transition Day may not be their teacher in 2024. We are currently working through our staffing and will be able to confirm any changes before the end of the school year.

We also welcomed our 2024 Grade 7 students and are pleased to announce that we will have 6 classes next year. It was great to meet so many new students and to see them making the most of their opportunities. One of our values is “Best Effort”. They demonstrated this value by giving their best in all activities throughout the day. If your child is nervous about attending high school, please reassure them that there are a number of supports in place at Reece that will help to ensure a smooth transition. Please encourage your child to talk to us if they have any questions or concerns.

2024 Prefects

During the second half of this year, our Grade 9s have been working through a leadership process to nominate for Prefect in 2024. These students stepped out of their comfort zone and put themselves through an application, speech and voting process. I would like to thank all students for embracing this opportunity and giving it their “Best Effort”. Below are the elected prefects for 2024. They will be formally inducted into their roles at an assembly early next year.

Harding Miller Education Foundation Scholarship Update

We have some exciting news to share! Grace, Bella, Jehanne, Erin, Hannah (absent), Chloe, Charlotte and Modesty (absent) have all been successful in receiving a Harding Miller Education Foundation Scholarship. Out of a field of 643 applications, these girls have been successful in receiving this prestigious scholarship. There were only 206 scholarships given out Australia wide in 2023. What an achievement! Throughout their schooling, these girls have continually demonstrated Reece High School’s values of ‘Respect, Best Effort, Responsibility and Inclusiveness.’ We couldn’t be more proud of their achievements and thankful to the numerous people who have worked with them to help in Realising Potential. The Harding Miller Education Foundation Scholarship is a $20,000 scholarship over 4 years of high school, awarded to girls across Australia who successfully meet the selection criteria and rigorous application requirements. The program gives these girls the tools and resources they need to not only complete high school but to reach their potential and build direct pathways to tertiary education.

We look forward to seeing what they can achieve throughout high school and beyond.

Taking inspiration from our efforts at the Athletics Carnival last week, Grade 7s have been sprinting to the finish line of Term 4.

What do you prefer? A novel or a film based on the novel?  Are there films you have watched that have changed the novel that you have liked? These are the hard questions that we have discussed in our new English unit ‘From the Director’s Chair’. The students from Grade 7 have been comparing and contrasting the novel ‘Caroline’ by Neil Gaiman and the film adaption. Which will they prefer?

In Science students have been learning about physics studying forces and motion. Students have started planning and constructing marble runs to demonstrate their knowledge.

In HASS students have been learning about the Australian Constitution and the rules that govern the country. Recently we have learnt about how we can make changes to The Constitution by voting in a referendum; students have been exploring past referendums and are writing a paragraph on ‘Should Australia become a republic?’.

Well done to Grade7 students who continue to be recognised and caught on our 'respect radar'. It has been wonderful to see so many student  showing our school value of respect towards themselves, other people and the school environment and being recognised for it.

Year 8 Camp

Last week, the Year 8 cohort ventured to Camp Banksia in Port Sorell for two days. This time away from school was a great opportunity for the students to participate in various activities that required teamwork, strategising and some fun. The Year 8 Team wish to take this opportunity to thank the families for their support in encouraging the students to participate in this experience with their peers.

Jehanne was the first to voice her approval of the newly built cabins and to comment that “this is so much better than Grade 7 Camp!” Numerous other students were equally as vocal about their concerns of Mr. Murray cooking them dinner and were relieved to hear that Mr. H had it covered. Their concerns quickly returned when they realised that Mrs Baxter decided to “assist” Mr H.

The Staff wish to publicly acknowledge the outstanding efforts of a few individual students who went over and above with their actions whilst on camp to demonstrate our school values:

Jack 

Blake 

Beau 

Toby 

Izzy 

Charli 

Kai 

Noah 

Cooper 

Bryce 

Here are a few pics to showcase some of the fun had on camp:

Outdoor Ed Students are looking forward to their camp in week 9 including canoeing, fishing, walking and taking a break from normal school proceedings.

Friday marks an important part of the transition for our current and future students, including our grade 9s, as they spend the day in the year 10 space, being oriented by next year’s grade 10 teachers.

In science, we concluded a unit on Asexual and Sexual Reproduction and have moved on to the more sombre unit of Earth’s Spheres, including topics like the carbon cycle and climate change.

 Mrs Farrs’s science students determining the mass of carbon stored in our trees

Maths sees us revisiting the topic of probability, which is familiar to students from previous years, but naturally bumping it up to a year 9 level. A focus of the year 9 curriculum for this topic is the ability to compare probabilities, requiring students make conversions and practice their skills of comparison to provide evidence for judgements.

In maths intervention, we are revising the skill of “order of operations”, where students use the mnemonic BIDMAS to solve expressions. As part of this we are also giving students the opportunity to improve their skills with multiplying/dividing and adding/subtraction negative numbers and reinforcing the skill of setting out problems. This year in maths, students have no doubt noticed the increasing complexity of the equations they are working with, and our data showed that it was time to revisit these skills.

Respectful students of the week. Year 9 staff would like to acknowledge the respectful behaviour of:

• 9A: Zara
• 9B: Ellah 
• 9C: Jackson 
• 9D: Samuel 
• 9E: Chloe 

Please return any RHS Sport uniform to the school office as soon as possible to avoid being invoiced for payment of outstanding uniform

Thank you 

Lost Property 

Please check outside the student window