Newsletter Term 1, Week 7 17 Mar 2022

The knowledge, understanding, skills and dispositions students develop through movement in Health and Physical Education encourage ongoing participation across their lifespan and in turn lead to positive health outcomes. Movement competence and confidence is seen as an important personal and community asset to be developed, refined, and valued.

Health and Physical Education promotes an appreciation of how movement in all its forms is central to daily life — from meeting functional requirements and providing opportunities for active living to acknowledging participation in physical activity and sport as significant cultural and social practices.

In the Junior and Senior School, students have been developing their health literacy in understanding an individual’s ability to gain access to, understand and use health information and services in ways that promote and maintain health and wellbeing. Consistent with a strengths-based approach, health literacy is a personal and community asset to be developed, evaluated, enriched and communicated.

To celebrate Health, Physical Education and Wellbeing Week, students participated in a variety of fun and engaging activities, including Mindfulness Yoga, dancing, boxing, fruit smoothie blender bikes and games with competence and confidence while building new friendships.

All students are to be commended for their effort in participation and application to learning. It is great to see students working collaboratively with high energy and a positive mindset.

Lauren Hay, Head of Health and Physical Education

Our GSV weekly sports have been progressing well, with many of our teams in contention for finals at the end of the term. 

Our rowers head off to Head of Schoolgirls this weekend for their final regatta for the year in Geelong. We are wishing our students and coaches a fantastic weekend where the hard work will pay off in many different ways. 

We are also wishing our kayakers all the best for their Schools Championships in Nagambie on Sunday. This is a big event for our kayak squad which keeps going from strength to strength! 

Last week, our GSV Swim and Dive teams put out excellent performances at the GSV Preliminary carnival. As a result of these fantastic performances, our swim team have qualified for Division 2, and our Diving team have once again qualified for Division 1 for the GSV Championship carnivals. Congratulations to all our swimmers, divers and coaches who have put in a mountain of work to make this happen. 

A big congratulations to our intermediate swimmers who came 1st in the intermediate aggregate and our senior divers who came 2nd in the senior aggregate. Overall, our divers ended up in 3rd place and our swimmers in 4th in the Preliminary C carnival.

We look forward to taking on our competition at the championship carnivals next Tuesday and Wednesday. 

We have also had some exciting recent individual achievements from our talented students. These include:

• Isa (Year 11) - was this week named in the Vic Metro U19 Cricket Squad to compete in the National Championships in Adelaide from April 7. Congratulations Isa on this selection!  
• Congratulations to a large number of Strathcona swimmers who competed in the State Age Championships over the long weekend. More information to come on some fantastic results - PBs, national qualifiers and medallists included!
• Mia (Year 9) - competed in the Victorian Surf Life Saving State Championships in Warrnambool over the long weekend. Mia won gold in the U14 Youth Girls Surf Swim event and also finished 6th in the Ironwoman event. Congratulations Mia! Mia will now compete in the National Surf Life Saving Championships on the Gold Coast in April. 
• Caity (Year 12) - Caity recently competed in the State Championships for Diving. She competed in both the 3m springboard and 1m springboard events winning the gold medal for the 3m and a bronze medal for the 1m. A big congratulations also goes out to our Diving Coach, Emily, who also competed in these championships, winning a bronze model in the 3m springboard.

Please reach out to let me know of any further achievements in the sporting world as we love to celebrate them with our community.

Keira Wills, Head of Sport

Items in the Career News include –
• Deakin Campus Tours
• Monash Campus Tours
• Applications for the 2023 ADF Gap Year are now open
• The Importance of Mathematics at School
• Important Changes to Folio Requirements for Creative Arts & Design Courses at Deakin
• La Trobe University – Sydney Campus
• News from Australian Catholic University
o Business introduces the Employability Program
o New Bachelor of Criminology and Criminal Justice degree
• Bachelor of Cyber Security at Victoria University
• Animation & Gaming Degrees in Victoria in 2022
• Snapshot of Chisholm Institute in 202

At the beginning of the year, simply having students attending school full time and settling back into campus life was an achievement. Fast forward seven weeks and our Year 9s are well and truly embedded into Tay Creggan life.  Many have started their Duke of Edinburgh activities, others have shown great commitment to kayaking, rowing, the Musical, Debating, GSV teams and the like.  Pleasingly, students are utilising Maple class pages to locate notes, lesson information and study tips.

It is important, however, for us to frame success around achieving personal best and linking it to the effort one makes in a particular subject.  Many students have had small gaps in knowledge and understanding and are working assiduously to fill them. This may not always translate into an A grade, and as the content becomes increasingly more abstract, A grades are harder to come by. We are encouraging all Year 9s to adopt a growth mindset and rather than fixating on a particular grade, to grapple with understanding the content, and learning skills which will stand them in good stead in the future.

Today Year 9s all had a Science incursion with Luke Byrnes who brought in a number of radios and taught us about radio waves, frequency and aerials. 

We wish all our Year 9 rowers great success on the weekend and spare a thought for those who have worked incredibly hard, only for a pandemic to interrupt their final regatta for the season. It does feel like a tough blow for a number of students.

Finally, I would like to commend Year 9 families for their response to covid rules and isolation. Any student with covid symptoms is reminded to stay home and we would ask that a RAT test be taken and symptoms cleared before returning to school.
Best wishes,

Karyn Murray, Head of Tay Creggan 

You are warmly invited to Strathcona Girls Grammar Parent Seminar Series event on how to strengthen all children and teens against anxiety, and build courage and resilience with Psychologist, Karen Young.

What could our children do if they knew in their hearts they were brave enough? All children and teens are capable of their very own versions of greatness. For too many though, anxiety will shut down their capacity to discover their potential - but it doesn't have to be this way. This transformational session will provide the essential information and strategies to help all parents and carers support children and adolescents to build courage and resilience, uncover their strengths, and take anxiety back to small enough. We will discuss ways to nurture the skills and qualities that will strengthen all children for life. Participants will learn:

• a new, empowering way for children, teens, and adults to think about anxiety, and how to use this to manage anxiety;
• taking the 'anxiety out of anxiety';
• how to build courage, resilience, and confidence in children and teens with anxiety;
• proven, practical ways to calm and strengthen an anxious brain;
• the power of parents to move children towards brave behaviour, and how to do this when anxiety is in the way;
• how to respond to anxiety in the moment to make way for calm and courage;
• how children can switch on the relaxation response;
• the different ways anxiety can manifest, and what to do;
• how to build the mindset that will strengthen against anxiety and make way for brave behaviour;
• how to build the solid neural foundations of resilience in all children;
• why new behaviours take time, why old responses can feel tough to change, and the simple explanation for children and teens that can build resilience and grit.

Because we know our children are mighty. Now to make sure they know it too.

Our guest speaker for this Parent Seminar Series event is Karen Young. Karen has worked as a psychologist in private practice, and organisational and educational settings. She is now a sought-after speaker, educator, and consultant, both at home in Australia and overseas. Karen is the founder of ‘Hey Sigmund’, an internationally popular online resource that provides contemporary, research-driven information on anxiety and the neurodevelopment of children. She has written three books, including the bestselling ‘Hey Warrior’ and 'Hey Awesome', which creatively assist children to understand and manage anxiety.

We look forward to you joining us for this event.

Parents’ Night Out – Dancing Under the Stars 2
Saturday 26 March 2022

The Strathcona Family Association are delighted to invite parents to join them for a fun evening at Dancing Under the Stars 2. Last year's event was a huge success with parents enjoying an evening on the Deck socialising and dancing the night away.

Enjoy a complimentary drink on arrival and then drinks can be purchased at the bar. Bountiful finger food and a DJ to entertain you who will be happy to play your requests!

Blow the Covid cobwebs away and have a fabulous evening with other Strathcona parents!

Smart casual attire and only $45per person.

* Please note that parents must be double vaccinated to attend

You are warmly invited to this upcoming Parent Seminar Series Event. 

'Body image' has been named as one of the top concerns across adolescent age groups and genders consistently in a number of surveys and studies over the last decade. Far from being a superficial or harmless concern, body image worries can span across physical, mental and social aspects of health and life to have significant impacts on young people, their families and communities. Significantly, this topic has never been as important as has emerged over the last 2 years with the various challenges that have been presented to all of us. It's not unusual that we are concerned about our teen's body image, but we might be unsure what to do or say. Should we be concerned or not? What is 'normal' anyway?

The good news is that parents, families, schools and communities can play powerful and important roles in supporting young people to understand their own experiences and provide environments where they are more likely to take care of their bodies from a place of respect.

This Parent Seminar will be presented by Body Image specialist and Dietitian Fiona Sutherland and is for parents and caregivers who would like to understand how to support a body-positive environment at home. The aim will be for attendees to leave with a deeper understanding of how body image concerns show up, how to have constructive conversations and take timely action if/when needed.