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Hughes House Captains celebrate another win on Sports Day
Welcome to our School Newsletter for Week 8, Term 1 2023.
Over the past two weeks students have engaged in a wide range of school activities including: Athletics Day, Swimming competitions and Open Boys Cricket. Congratulations to Hughes House on their win for Athletics Day and also to our Swimming teams and Open Boys Cricket team for their wins and progressing to the next rounds of competition.
The past two weeks has seen a number of Curriculum enrichment programs held across our school, including Youth Opportunities, SRC Grip conference, a visit from Mates on a Mission and an Aged Rights Service presentation. Well done also to all students participating in NAPLAN assessments in Years 7 and 9.
School Improvement Planning
Our School Improvement Planning focus over 2023 builds on our achievements from 2022 on Literacy and Numeracy. A summary of our targets include:
| Goal 1 - Literacy Targets | Goal 2 - Numeracy Targets |
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Student, Parent & Teacher Interviews
Student, Parent and Teacher interviews are scheduled for Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th April. I encourage all families who are able, to make the most of this opportunity to meet with subject teachers, celebrate your child/ren’s progress and discuss the next steps for achieving their best.
Mobile Phones
Implementation of Mobile Phone restrictions has been an overall success for students and staff at our school. I’d like to acknowledge the great efforts of our students in adopting and adapting to the new expectations and rules. In addition to BYOD technologies, we are investing in further digital devices at our school including Cameras and recording devices for use across curriculum areas. Remember to see the policy on our school website for further information.
School Lockers
New School Lockers have arrived with an extra 322 school lockers to bolster numbers to over 680 lockers school wide. This is to ensure our school vision of each child having access to a personal school locker. Further work is underway around locker protocols, for implementation from Term 2 onwards.
School Crossings
Our Front of School and Hawke Street Campus crossings have now been completed. A fencing project for the Hawke Street Campus has been completed over the past two weeks, further increasing safety for students accessing the area during the school day.
Student Free Day
On Tuesday 14th of March we held our first Student Free Day for 2023. The focus of the day was on Teaching & Learning strategies, including building on from Curriculum Scope and Sequences to Curriculum Unit Planning. It was a productive day, with a high degree of outcomes across all learning areas. This work relates back to our School Improvement Plan for improving on student Literacy and Numeracy.
Eringa – one year on
March 29th will make one year since the tragic Eringa fire. We will acknowledge this with our student community through our upcoming assembly on Friday 31st March. This will include an acknowledgement of the incident, but also a focus on optimism in how far we have come as a school since the event, including:
- Complete re-fit and re-calibration of school network, internet, telephones, bell systems and Learner Management System (Cloud-based).
- Establishment of a School Wellbeing Team and Hub model (Assistant Principal, Coordinator, Youth Worker and Pastoral Care Worker).
- New school campus established on Hawke Street.
- New school crossings at the front and back of our school.
- Overhaul of our school operations, policies and procedures.
I would like to acknowledge the significant work of our staff, the input of our students and the great support from our community, the Department for Education and Government of South Australia in the ongoing recovery process. While there is significant work and effort in our progress, I’m confident that in time we will emerge as an even stronger school than before.
David Marino
Principal
Parent Teacher Interviews Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th April (Week 10)
Good Friday Public Holiday Friday, 7th April (Week 10)
Easter Monday Public Holiday Monday, 10th April (Week 11)
Last Day of Term 1- Early Dismissal Friday, 14th April (Week 11)
Click the link below for our School Calendar
Parent teacher interviews will be taking place in week 10 of this term, providing you the oppurtunity to meet with subject teachers at Kapunda High School.
Tuesday, 4th and Wednesday 5th April
Kapunda High School 4:00pm – 7:00pm
(All interviews will be held in Building A and B – Main Entrance)
Students are strongly encouraged to attend with their families to discuss their progress in different subject areas.
Appointment bookings can be made any time from Friday, 17 March, up until Monday, 3 April.
To book an appointment, follow the links from the Kapunda High School website labelled ‘Parent Teacher Interviews’ or go directly to:
To log on you will need to enter the unique code for the event: CODE: dxzfq
You will then be able to select an appropriate time with any of the subject teachers of your child, available on that night. At the end you will be able to print out a schedule to use for the night. If you have any difficulties accessing the internet or the website, or using the on-line booking system, please contact the school and we will be happy to assist you.
The interview times are short (10 minutes) and we ask that you please try to stay within your allocated time slot by discussing matters of high importance first and addressing other issues if time permits.
Some teachers will not be available as they are on leave or work part-time. A phone call or email correspondence can occur if you wish to touch base with teachers who are absent or unavailable.
On Friday 10th March, KHS held the annual Sports Day. Hughes took the win, following on from their success at the Swimming Carnival. An excellent day was had by all.
AGE GROUP CHAMPIONS
| GIRLS | BOYS | |
| U13 | ||
| Runner-Up | Nicole Jones | Ethan Baillie |
| Winner | Layla Valentine | Rylee Saers |
| U14 | ||
| Runner-Up | Mikayla Wagner | Koby Eguchi & Ryder Chinner |
| Winner | Tayla McCarthy | Riley Both |
| U15 | ||
| Runner-Up | Alyssa Valentine | Jye Gordon, Stanley Polley & Brayden Whimpress |
| Winner | Sierra Hansen | Charlie Moss |
| U16 | ||
| Runner-Up | Amity Hansen | Cody Weltman |
| Winner | Sophie Eaton | Tom Johnson |
| U21 (Open) | ||
| Runner-Up | Carissa Wood & Summar Fidge | Cooper Carpenter |
| Winner | Amelia Schuster | Lachlan Woods |
HOUSE RESULTS
| HOUSE | POINTS |
| HUGHES | 2088 |
| HAWKE | 2068 |
| KIDMAN | 1816 |
Adam Goodes with KHS Students Scott, Tali and Connor, and KHS Staff Scott Durand and Luke Karpany.
Kapunda High School was very fortunate to receive an invitation to attend the GO foundation cultural connection day on Thursday March 16th. The GO Foundation was started by Adam Goodes, Michael O'Loughlin and James Gallichan. The GO foundation provides scholarships to Indigenous students from primary school through to university, to students who live on country, in community and with family. The financial assistance gives GO students access to the tools and resources they need.
Scott Durand
Aboriginal Education Teacher
KHS SRC students at the Grip Leadership conference last week
On Thursday the 16th March, eight of the senior SRC members attended a leadership conference at the Entertainment Centre. The Grip Leadership Conference aims to give student leaders strategies and tips on everything that has to do with being a leader, and is done across the country. The conference is split into 3 interactive and informative sessions, two of which are elective.
The first session essentially went into different ways to make your school a good place for everyone, and gave tips that the SRC can absolutely consider embedding into our practice. The ideas raised in this session spanned from implementing different activities and clubs that appeal to a large demographic, to smaller things to just make the school feel livelier.
Session two started by discussing different people a leader can impact the most, followed by our first elective session. Out of the two choices, being “How to Get Everybody Participating in Large Events” and “How to Make Every Student Feel Valued”, between us we attended all the sessions. The session was incredibly informative and put forth multiple ways to make an event successful in terms of both the quality and turnout.
The third session was another elective one. The two choices were “How to Get Everybody Onboard with a New Idea” and “How to Replace Conflict with Unity”. I chose the first again, which in my opinion was even more helpful than the elective I had chosen prior. The SRC are constantly trying new things and this session specifically is going to help drastically.
In between sessions, a duo called the “Loud Boys” came out on stage for some audience participation. Volunteers from different schools went up to participate in games, most of which involved the audience. During their last game, our very own Lachlan Woods participated in a dance battle and let me tell you, that boy has some moves.
In all, the day was fun and informative and the SRC will greatly benefit from everything talked about in our sessions.
Tyler Crease
Year 12 Prefect
On Thursday the 16th of march, 8 of our SRC students from Years 10, 11, and 12 attended the Grip Leadership Conference. It was a jam-packed day, full of learning and engaging events, with plenty of opportunities to interact with other schools.
The conference was broken up into fun and upbeat sessions. It was in session 2 that I got up on stage for a trivia round. It was great to be up on stage and to represent our school. While it was scary to see so many faces looking up at the stage, I’m glad I did it. I was not the only one who got to represent our school on the day. Lachy also got on stage for a dance round. His dance moves blew the crowd away!
Throughout the day all of us gained great ideas on how to work on our own leadership and use this to improve the school. The conference really helped us to come together as a group and provided a space where we could identify problems within our school community. We would like to work on diversity. It was great to be in such an inclusive environment with a bunch of like-minded young people. We can't wait to use everything we have learned, and share it with the rest of the SRC team.
Freya Pollard
Year 11 Prefect
In Year 8 Science, students have been exploring how the development of the microscope has led to scientists determining that cells are the building blocks of all living things. Within the cells there are many parts known as organelles and each organelle has a particular function or job to do. Once students developed their knowledge and understanding of this, they were tasked with designing and building a 3-dimensional model of both an animal and plant cell. It was incredible to see how many students wanted to go above and beyond model building within the classroom and bake cakes at home to model their understanding.
Michael Raschella
Science Teacher
On Thursday, March 9, Ben and Mike from Mates on a Mission visited Kapunda High School to deliver a mental health and wellbeing presentation to different year levels. Ben, who lost 98% of his eyesight overnight due to a rare medical condition and Mike, who lost both legs due to a deadly disease at age 18, spoke about their challenges in life and mindset to be able to overcome these.
We received amazing feedback from students regarding strategies to support themselves and others in challenging situations and would like to say a big thank you to Ski for Life for putting on the presentation.
Sam Milne
Assistant Principal
Positive School Culture and Wellbeing
Last Wednesday, 15 March, students involved in our musical this year came back to the Drama Room for a pizza & movie night. As our musical, Spamalot, is based on the movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we watched the movie to get a sense of the silliness required for Spamalot.
Before the movie, we enjoyed pizza and snacks, and a couple of Holy Grail quizzes, to give students moments to watch out for during the movie.
Rehearsals for the musical are happening most lunchtimes at school, with some holiday rehearsals coming up as well, where we are able to really get stuck into developing characters and rehearsing the song & dance numbers.
Mr Brett Ferris & Mrs Christie Bridge
All visitors please check in with our friendly staff on arrival at our Reception office, which is situated along the walkway from the West Terrace entrance. Staff will assist visitors, contact appropriate staff for meetings or arrange for student collection.
'Signing In'
Volunteers play an important role in our school canteen being able to offer a wide variety of healthy food to our students and staff at recess and lunch times. Volunteers are encouraged to come and help in our canteen - even for an hour. Assistance during the peak preparation times, between 10:00am and 2:00pm would be most valued and appreciated. And of course, a regular commitment would enable Canteen Manager, Sam, to better plan the menu in advance. At this stage we are desperate for volunteers on Tuesdays especially. If we cannot get anyone for Tuesdays we may have to close the canteen on this day.
What hoops do I need to jump through?
Yes, there is some paperwork and some legal requirements such as completing the online Responding to Abuse and Neglect (RAN-EC) course and having a Working With Children Check (WWCC). Kaye Clancy can assist with beginning the process of applying for the WWCC, which is free to our volunteers. There will also be a general induction with the Department for Education and we will share other important information before you begin.Call the school and ask to speak either to Kaye, or Sam in the canteen if you'd like to learn more about the kind of help our canteen requires. If you're keen to begin, please contact Kaye at the school.
