8 November 2019

Newsletter Articles

Assistant Principal’s Report

Dear Parents/Carers

Term Four is flying by! It has been wonderful to see everyone settling back into their classroom routines and engaging with their learning.

I would like to thank all of our incredible teachers and SESO’s for their continued contributions to improving student outcomes.

EAP/TEAP Review Meetings

Year 12 TEAP Review meetings took place in Week Three. It was fabulous to hear about the exciting things happening for our Year 12s through vocational education courses, work training and other transition programs. A special thank you to Raylee Parker (Acting ST1 TAP) for leading these meetings with stakeholders and continuing to facilitate a successful and student centered transition from school.

Over the next two weeks, all remaining students will have their EAP/TEAP meetings to celebrate the wonderful learning that has occurred over the course of the year.

Disability Services and Inclusion Awards

Henbury On Aralia and Henbury School excelled at the Northern Territory Disability Services and Inclusion Awards! Not only did they win highly commended for the Middle Years Skill Set Program, Henbury on Aralia won the "Excellence in Innovation" award and "Overall Award for Excellence" for 2019! Congratulations to all of our hard-working students and staff and thanks to our patrons and community supporters.

Joan Ocampo and Maddison Anderson were also nominated for individual awards. Joan for Outstanding Disability Employee and Maddison for Excellence in improving Participation. Congratulations on your nominations ladies!

Halloween Disco

The Annual Halloween Disco was held on Thursday 31st of October. There were a wonderful array of spooky costumes on display as students danced the night away!

Thanks to all of you that supported NMS fundraiser BBQ at the Halloween Disco. We made $356.50! Mammoth effort. We are so much closer to the total of $1800 cost for each of our 4 students to get to Perth for the ALL Schools Australia Athletics Champs in December.

Upcoming events

Loud Shirt Day

Remember to wear your loud shirt on 14th of November!

Year 12 Graduation Dinner

Tickets are still available for the Year 12 graduation dinner 28/11 at the Double Tree by Hilton. Please contact the front office to purchase your tickets.

Henbury Corporate Luncheon

Tickets are still available but selling fast! Contact our fabulous front office staff on 8997 7077 for more details. See NT News article that was published.

Lauren Hofmeyer
Acting Assistant Principal

DARWIN MIDDLE SCHOOL LITERACY PROJECT

DHS Outreach has been working on the Inspiration Project which is a task for their English Modified Stage One course. Students chose to base their project on the Elderly. We had to prove we could work together to come up with good ideas that would “Tell a story”.

We were aiming to develop personally in our ability to think.

The idea to base our work on the Elderly came from our study of “Blueback”. We admired Dora Jackson who was one of the main characters. She never gave up. She was a hero who managed to save Longboat Bay and have it turned into a marine sanctuary by preserving against the evil Developers.

We used a program called MindMup 2 to brainstorm our ideas and to break them down to one focus area. We decided to use bamboo boxes and to make an Art Installation about the Elderly. Each of us contributed ideas and worked on at least three of the boxes either individually or as a group.

Despite the fact that we worked on this project for two terms on and off on the days we were at Darwin High, we were worried we would not get it finished in time for our assessment but we were proud of the fact that we finished ahead of time.

Our work was featured in the recent Henbury Art exhibition and was seen by some Darwin High Staff. We found this project to be very worthwhile and we are extremely proud of what we have accomplished. We could not wait to see how people reacted to our work. Another highlight was this enabled us to finish our English Modified Stage One course and earn 20 points. Go DHS Outreach!!!!!

YELLOW 2

Four out of the seven students in Yellow 2 are about to complete their Certificate One in Agrifoods through Charles Darwin University (CDU). The course was a valuable opportunity for them to both socialise with students from other schools and to learn valuable information about growing their own food.

Cert I in Agrifoods is an excellent study opportunity for students from our school. Many students over the years have learned valuable skills in regard to developing a good work ethic, plant propogation and team work through this programme.

I personally have seen real ongoing benefits to our students who often it hard to find somewhere to work and places to get work experience. This course provided work experience for two of our students.

The course by necessity took a long time (one day a year all year). This was necessary to be able to observe the crops we planted through the year grow to fruition and to learn about caring for a plot of land over the course of a year.

From an economic perspective one could see why CDU would want to cut a course like Agrifoods, it employs two Lecturers all year and one of them is delivering it one day a week all year. A University is about developing valuable education outcomes for people; not just making money. I would like them to reconsider cutting this course as it is an important opportunity given to our students. An opportunity that not only gives them some experience and training with the possibility of leading to a job, but also develops a love and appreciation of how food is grown which will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

Hopefully CDU will follow the lead of the Northern Territory Government, who said “NTG funding was to keep courses running not to fund redundancies”.

Nim Jayawardhana, Classroom Teacher, Yellow 2.

GREEN 2

What a busy Semester Two Green 2 have been having!! Although there is only the 3 boys in the class, some days it feels like and sounds like 10! Below are a few highlights of what we have been up to!

The Science Fair!! The boys loved creating our rocket, which we actually built up and around Deacon. It involved team work and a lot of creativity. We even walked away placing in the top 3!! The science experiments were also a lot of fun to explore and get messy for the afternoon!

Deacon as the rocket and Toby squirting monsters

School Camp at Batchelor!!

We loved riding the bikes, rock climbing, tackling the high ropes and making new friends!

Deacon Bike, Ken Rock Climbing & Toby High Ropes

Baking the cookies for Henbury on Aralia! If you have been down to HOA you may have seen the famous and most importantly delicious, smartie cookies! The boys in G2 are in charge of baking them. The last couple of weeks we have been mixing up the flavours from white chocolate and cranberry to triple choc! When one breaks, the boys are more than happy to give it a taste test!

Baking cookies

Ken has had a fantastic semester learning to cook his own lunch for himself and his brother Tom. On Tuesday he cooks beef spaghetti and Friday he cooks chicken curry! Let’s just say there is never anything left on the plate!

Ken eating pasta and Ken cutting

AUSTRALIAN REPRESENTATIVE AFL PLAYER

Aaron Knight-Nilsson, a member of the DHS Outreach class, was selected in the AFL Inclusion All-Australian squad. He has recently travelled to Brisbane to take part in exhibition matches as an Australian Representative at the 2019 INAS Global Games. This was a first for Australia.

Held every four years, the INAS Global Games is the largest sporting event for elite athletes with a learning disability, with more than 1000 athletes from across the world taking part in the event this year.

Aaron was chosen in this team following his successful record in the AFL National Inclusion Carnival. Well done Aaron.

Green 4

Welcome back to Green 4. Let us reflect on our year so far. At the end of Term Two, we said goodbye to our dear friend Igen. He is now attending Carpentaria Post Schools Program. We hope he is doing well and miss him heaps. We are super excited for Nathan and Fu Seng who will be graduating at the end of the year. Fu Seng began his transition to Carpentaria Adult Day Services in Term Three. Nathan began his transition to Carpentaria Post Schools Program this term. We will miss them greatly and wish them all the best.

Becoming work ready is a massive focus for us, and the boys have continued kicking goals in this area. Nathan is working at Henbury on Aralia on Fridays and every second Saturday. He started work experience at Woolworths in Nightcliff and, both Nathan and Fu Seng continue to work at the Royal Darwin Hospital in the laundry. In Term Two, Manoli worked with the Henbury Garden Crew. He and Thomas are now completing an in school gardening program. In Term Three, Thomas and Patterson started work experience at Henbury on Aralia.

Our class continued running a Coffee Crew training program. Patterson and Thomas learnt to take orders and make tea. Fu Seng and Manoli set tables and cooked a hot morning tea for the class. We’ve also continued with our class business “Meaties Pet Food”. Our latest experiment was dehydrated lamb lung.

The communication in Green 4 is inspiring. The boys regularly go out for breakfast during Community Access. They make their orders using a variety of Augmentative and Alternative Communication to support their verbal language. All five boys are understood and communicate their messages effectively. This is something we are all extremely proud of.

Thanks again Annemarie for taking on the mammoth job of personalising and assembling Fu Seng’s brand new PODD, just in time for his transition to Carpentaria. We really appreciate it.

Sadly we will also be saying goodbye to our dear friend and amazing colleague Chloe Dixon. Thank you for all your knowledge, professionalism, friends’ quotes and memes. We will miss you very much.

KIDS TEACHING KIDS

Thank you Kids Teaching Kids for the amazing opportunity provided for our students to co-led the Melbourne Water Conference. This inspired us to contribute in creating a more sustainable environment. I am a proud teacher mentoring our group of students from Henbury and witnessing how they gave their best as young environmental leaders. It is a bonus being chosen as one of the Kids Teaching Kids Teacher Ambassador together with other co-educators across Australia. Thank you Maddy Anderson and my husband, Freddie, the whole Melbourne Trip was such a success because of your co-leadership.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Happy Birthday to the following students that celebrate their birthdays in November:

Keanu – 3rd
Jeffrey – 4th
Faisal – 4th
Jayden - 5th
Nakeya – 7th
Paul – 10
Josie L – 15th
Hayley – 20th
Scott – 22nd
Hugo – 22nd
Jack – 22nd
Hasan – 26th
Cruz – 29th

UPCOMING EVENTS

COMMUNITY NOTICES