We acknowledge that we are on the land of the First People of the Murray and Mallee.We pay our respects to the Elders both past and present and honour the laws and customs that cross this traditional country, the ancestors who taught and still teach the knowledge that is embedded forever with the Aboriginal people today.

Open Day

It was great to welcome the visitors who attended our open days last week and show them our school.  It was an opportunity to see our classrooms in action and walk through the learning spaces we have been developing over the last three years. The tours were of particular interest to year 6/7 students who are already wondering about what happens next year.  If you have a student in year 5, 6 or 7 and weren’t able to attend last week but are interested in a tour through the school please contact us and we will arrange one for you.

Student/Parent/Teacher Interviews  

We encourage your attendance at the upcoming student/parent/teacher discussions to talk about student achievement, progress and goal setting for the remainder of the year.  

Interviews are not just for students who aren't progressing as well as expected; they are an opportunity for all students and families to discuss the skill development of students. For those students who are doing well it is an opportunity to talk about the appropriate level of challenge to enable students to continue to develop their skills and understanding. 

Students are able to set goals and put actions in place to improve results during the remainder of Semester One. Use the online booking system now to reserve your preferred time slots. 

Continuation of Learning in the case of offsite 

It has been twelve months since I wrote to you regarding our COVID-19 arrangements for offsite learning.  As seen over the last twelve months, we are keen to maintain the learning for our young people. While we are extremely fortunate to have students learning face-to-face at school, I wanted to take a moment to remind students and families of some important information that is relevant in our day-to-day operations, whether we are as normal on-site learning or if we are ever required again to go to offsite learning:

• Daymap is our primary source of curriculum information for students and parents.
• Please refer to Daymap for information on all subjects.
• Daymap access is very important for students so please contact us if your student has trouble accessing Daymap at home.
• Teachers use Daymap to communicate with students, upload assignments/worksheets for each class.
• Daymap messages can be sent to individual teachers.
• Students should all have their Learnlink details.
• Learnlink will give access to Office 365 (including Word and Excel), Teams and Minecraft for Education.

Teams is the Department endorsed live platform and is accessible from the website or from the download app.

Mat Evans - Principal

Our school’s Student Representative Council (SRC) members have met twice this term to determine their focus areas on improving our school. We have a great range of student voices that have fantastic ideas to improve and benefit our school environment and are very determined to achieve some goals this year. The three committees formed and their leaders within the SRC are:

Interior Improvements Committee – Heads: Izaac L, Alex C Secretary: Charlee W

Exterior Improvements Committee - Heads: Madelyn L, Anja T Secretary:  Lachlan G

Student Wellbeing/ Activities Committee - Heads: Tristyn H, Amelia C Secretary:  Maggie G

If you have any ideas or suggestions on anything you would like to change or improve at Renmark High School, speak to the Student Representative Council members in your class.

Student Representative Council teacher support – Lauren Schiller, Sam Owens, Darija Atsaves and Heidi Stanojevic

Since 2008, the annual National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has taken place for students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9.

NAPLAN helps parents, carers and educators to see if students are meeting important numeracy and literacy standards.

Last year NAPLAN did not occur due to the COVID-19 situation.

This year our year 9 students will complete all their NAPLAN tests online via computer, rather than using the traditional paper and pencil.

Moving online brings many benefits and opportunities including providing better assessment, more precise results and faster turnaround of information.

A critical step in preparing for NAPLAN online is our year 9 students’ participation in a practice test on Thursday 25th of March.

The purpose of the practice test is to ensure students are familiar with their device and the online test environment, as well as to test school and national infrastructure systems and processes.

The Practice Test is not another NAPLAN and will not formally assess students who participate.

Year 9 parents should expect a parent letter home with your child.

More information will be provided in the upcoming weeks.

Marina Pater - Director of Learning

Year 9 Food Technology have been extending their skill level by making yiros. They marinated the meat, made their own tzatziki sauce and yeast-based pita bread. The pita bread was a new skill for all of us and turned out well. We picked oragano from our herb garden to marinte the meat and garnish the dish. There certainly wasn't leftovers today.

Kristina Kalkstein - Food Technology teacher

Product label design 

Following the design process as true designers, students have worked on designing and creating a product label for a product of their own choice. Students have applied their knowledge of various Photoshop skills and techniques, their critical and creative thinking, as well as a variety of numeracy skills in measuring for this task. Students were also challenged to convert their product label design from the screen and apply it to an actual three-dimensional product.

Darija Atsaves, Digital Media teacher

Year 10 student photographers spent a double lesson exploring (and lots of problem-solving) the use of our school drones.  Student will use these photographs to further explore various digital editing techniques using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom.

Darija Atsaves, Photography teacher

Year 9 students have started exploring plate tectonics in Science. They are learning about the structure of features of the Earth, both above and below the surface of the planet. Here students are using toilet paper to model the cross-section of Earth to develop an understanding of the relative thicknesses of the crust, mantle and core of the Earth. This gave them an idea of how small in scale the solid part of the crust (the lithosphere) is in comparison to the rest of our planet.

Mike Young - Science teacher

A consequence of the global pandemic for our language students at Renmark High School has been the ban on international travel. This has meant that we have not been able to host exchange students in 2020, a situation which will remain unchanged for some time.

It has also meant that our students have been unable to participate in individual exchange programs to countries of choice, nor join school study tours to New Caledonia, France or Spain.

A highlight of our languages programs, student exchanges are often a great motivation for students to continue their pursuit of language studies, however the closure of airports has resulted in a new opportunity for Renmark High School.

Former French student teacher, Olivia Gravier, who completed her practicum at Renmark High School and is now residing in France, has reached out to our school this year and invited us to connect with young French students at the school where she works.

The year 8 French class are the beneficiaries of this initiative where our students all now have ‘French Pen-pals’ who attend Collège Saint-Georges, a middle school in the village of Beaumont-le-Roger, Normandie, 130 kilometres west of Paris.

As a class, we are learning how to read and respond to the students’ questions about our lives here in Australia. With France still in lock down, students describe what it’s like to wear masks to school every day, a scenario that our students have been lucky to avoid until now.

To expand on this idea further, I am working with other English teachers at the college to create pen-pals for French students across all year levels at Renmark High School.

‘It’s a great opportunity to practice our French in a real-life situation’

‘I noticed how neat their handwriting is too’

Fletcher

‘They make mistakes in English, but I didn’t expect them to be so good at it though.’

 ‘I hope we can continue our connection with these students’

Stephen

‘I want to be able to write in cursive like them’

Tyler

Jasmine Sotiroulis - French & Spanish teacher

As a part of Stage 2 Outdoor Education course the class took part in an kayak expedition across three days around Lake Bonney, Chambers Creek, Kingston-on-Murray and the Loch Luna area. We were gifted with three perfect days of warm and calm weather, which meant the paddle was more enjoyable.

Some of the highlights include:

• Navigating through obstacles and overgrown areas (reeds, duckweed)
• Exploring a different part of the river
• Sliding down a bank in between reeds (nearly capsizing)
• Developing relationships with our peers
• Escaping from technology and our other busy commitments (school, work)

Overall the camp was a great success and the class is looking forward to our surfing and self-reliant expeditions later in the year.

Jamie Dicerbo and year 12 class

After a successful start to the term in swimming (taking out the Interschool and Adelaide – C Grade events), it was time for the students to turn their focus on Athletics. In this already jam-packed term many students competed in the 1500m and 800m runs before participating in the annual RHS Sports Day last Friday.

We congratulate those students who challenged themselves and supported their house in the events building up to our big day. The track and oval looked green (although heavy in patches) and we had many solid performances, with the standout being Bailey W who broke the U15 800m and 1500m running records.

Like every year, there was a lot of excitement and colour as the students arrived on Friday. Was 2021 going to be won by the strong Chaffey or Murray teams or would another team step up? 

As the captains continued to run around organising their houses, the scores were getting updated and to everyone’s surprise Tintra was in the lead position. This added some extra pressure on all of the captains, particularly the Tintra Captains, as they have not lifted the Championship Shield since 2008.

Even though the day was getting quiet warm, the students kept pushing through, with the high jump attracting plenty of attention as Isaac M cleared the bar with cheers caming from everywhere (even from our visitors from the Primary School).

As the events finished, both students and staff waited in anticipation to see who the 2021 champions would be. 

The results came and everyone waited patiently as the Age Cup Winners were awarded. Sturt were crowned the Ball Games Champions through their involvement in the spoke, football and soccer and circle gap relays.

Following this, Mr Evans announced that Tintra were both the Most Improved and overall winners for 2021. Grace, Sasha, Kyle and Thomas were proud of the efforts from every member of the Tintra team, being crowned champions for the first time since 2008.

Congratulations to all who were involved in the day. A huge thanks to our sponsors and parents for coming out during the day. Tianna, Jorja, Tyrone and Harrison were name most dedicated for their house.

Aaron Camplin - Health & Physical Education Coordinator

After a disruptive year in 2020 many students maintained their training and fitness while waiting for sports and competitions to resume as normal. Over many years, records have been set and broken with students continuing to do their personal best while representing the Renmark High School. 

Many of our swimming and athletics records have been around for over 25-30 years, although a few of our current students have been getting closer to breaking these. This year we have already acknowledged Bailey W, as he set a new 800m and 1500m running record (set in the early 90s). Bailey also performed well in the pool, at school and locally, as he set another record in the U15 Breaststroke.

Another student who has been setting and challenging a few records over the years in the pool is year 11 student Madelyn L. She has had another outstanding summer and has set three new RHS swimming records.

These include:

• U16 Freestyle (29.52 seconds) – set in 1995 by Patrina Hale.
• U16 Backstroke (34.55 seconds) – set in 1995 by Patrina Hale.
• Open Butterfly (32:50 seconds) – broke her own record set in 2020.

Congratulations to both Bailey and Madelyn on these huge achievements. All the hard work, dedication and training is paying off. All the best to those students in the Interschool and Adelaide Athletics team.

Will there be any more records broken in 2021?

In years 8-12 English students are expected to read at the beginning of each lesson for 10 minutes. At Renmark High School we understand that reading is important and that it is a powerful skill to have. Reading is a transferrable skill and is used in every aspect of our life. To improve the speed and accuracy of reading practice needs to occur. In this way, reading stamina is built. It is an expectation that your student brings all of their learning materials to class including their independent reading novel. This book can come from our school library or from home.

To build reading stamina we encourage that reading takes place in and out of the classroom. I encourage you to have conversation with your student about what they are reading. You could ask them questions such as:

• What is happening in the current book you are reading?
• Are you enjoying it?
• Have you read any other books by this author?
• Can you make some predictions about what might happen next?
• Is this book challenging you?
• Are there any words you don’t understand?

As in all aspects of life taking an interest in what your student is reading, modelling reading at home, taking a trip to the library or local bookshop will reinforce the importance of life-long reading.

Biljana Elliott - Literacy and Global Perspectives Leader

What glorious weather we are having now! As I drive to school the mornings are crisp and beautiful, and I sometimes feel excited to be facing a brand new day, untouched and just waiting for me to imprint upon it.   Sometimes I feel grumpy or tired or just not great and as I sit here I wonder what my interaction on the day is. Is it one of happiness, joy and positive things or will it be irritable, sad and just not nice? I hope that the majority of my time I leave people, places and things, better than when I arrived. I can only hope!

That gets me thinking – as I sit at my desk writing this, about being grateful. When I do think of the positive things I have to be grateful for my, whole outlook changes. 

It's Interschool at Waikerie on Tuesday and I do hope our amazing young athletes do well and enjoy competing in their chosen field.   We have some amazing young people here at Renmark High and I am so looking forward to the outcome on Tuesday.  Go Renmark.  Take care everyone and keep smiling and be kind to each other.

Pammy Main  - Pastoral Care Worker