Please join me in applauding the enormous efforts of the staff at NASHS, who have committed to providing a packed 9-week agenda of opportunities for our students.

With events including the Yr 7 Transition Days at Middleton Beach, Swimming Carnivals and the Yr 12 School Ball, NASHS students were able to demonstrate their leadership, sporting prowess and respectfulness, to complement their educational endeavours in the classrooms.

As is evidenced by the positive position that we find ourselves in at NASHS, the school has been on an improvement journey for the past 6 years. This journey has seen the school make outstanding gains in both the culture and the student outcomes. NASHS boasts a vibrant and friendly atmosphere and our students achieve at levels that are higher than our ‘like schools’.

To support our continued growth, we have sought the support of the Fogarty Foundation. Through our involvement in their EDvance Program, we will be surveying the staff, students and the families associated with the school, to determine the focus for our improvement agenda.

To ensure that your views are reflected in our improvement journey, we invite you to complete the Tell Them From Me (TTFM) Survey. The information you provide will be used to maintain our commitment to working together in partnership to further improve student learning and wellbeing at NASHS.

The survey is anonymous and will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. You are able to access the parent survey on your computer or mobile device by clicking here or copy and paste the URL below.

http://tellthemfromme.com/Northalbanyshs

As this improvement agenda gathers momentum, both the P&C and the School Board will be putting the call out for new members. As a school, we genuinely value the input of our community and it is through these two vital associations that your opinions can be harnessed to help NASHS continue to provide the education and social connection that will help Albany thrive.

Thank you for your continued support of our great school.

Peter Hurle
NASHS Principal

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NASHS is holding a parent-teacher contact afternoon next term on Wednesday May 12, 2021 (Week 4).  The school will be open from 3:20pm to 5:30pm with interviews happening in the Performing Arts Theatre and Library.

Once again, North Albany SHS uses the online booking appointment system called Parent Teacher Online (PTO). 

Appointments can be made online from Week 1 next term. You will receive an email from the school during the first week of Term 2 to give instructions on how to access PTO through the NASHS website homepage and the PTO mobile app. 

For further queries about PTO, please contact Mrs Jo Steel on (08) 98 920 611 or email at jo.steel@education.wa.edu.au.

School Officer
Jo Steel

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It's with great excitement that I write of the first Young Writers Online (YWO) for the year. With 20 participants locked in, we held our first session on Friday 26th March in the VC room in the NASHS Library. We were truly spoilt for inspiration because Dianne Wolfer, local legend, was the opening author for the year.

The VC room is a change from the previous PAT venue, but proved to be equally suitable, if not more intimate and convenient. Dianne Wolfer took the students through their paces, with warmup writing exercises, stories of her life, words of wisdom and readings from her many and varied publications.

Previously we have accessed laptops for notetaking and creative writing, but this time we started old school, with pen and paper. I think the amount that was written, and the energy put into ideas, was proof that sometimes technology can be a distraction from the initial creative process. 

Students enjoyed both morning and afternoon tea in the new tranquillity garden that adjoins the student services block. Perhaps it won't be so good in winter, but on Friday it was cool and calm, just the tonic for young writers needing a break.

When students are at YWO, they are not expected to complete an entire piece of writing on the day, but rather start the journey of brainstorming, drafting and stretching their imaginations. The work produced was prolific, with many wonderful ideas and beginnings generated - watch out for some future best sellers! In the meantime, enjoy some snippets of the students work. These have been extracted from exercises and tasks set by Dianne Wolfer.

Bushfire Warmup: "Incandescent flares rise up dangerously and I wince. Short, staggered breaths as I hobble along the path to hell. Trees black with soot, dried tears on my face." Yr 8

Warmup: "Zack remembered first seeing the little girl. She was a peculiar child. She didn't give up attempting to break down the door for hours, and then it was only when she grew too tired." Yr 8

Anger: "I want to rip my skin off and gouge out my eyeballs. I want to smash and break everything." Yr 9

Character: "Fish is a red snapper, living in an ocean plagued by plastics. Her children have either died by eating plastic or have been taken by the great shadows." Yr 9

Anger: "Anger poured over Rahanes body as she steamed all around the orphanage. It just wasn't fair, she had everything and then lost it in one day!" Yr 8

Warmup: "The strangely beautiful sight of gnarled trees and endless orange-red dirt plains touched hearts, as they were heading into the most spiritual place of all." Yr 10

Creativity is alive, rich and well in NASHS creative writers!

Jo Morgan
Young Writers Online Coordinator

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On Tuesday, 23 March North Albany SHS hosted the start of the Hawaiian Ride For Youth. The Ride aims to remove the stigma surrounding youth mental health and raise funds for Youth Focus to build a more resilient community. The Ride starts in Albany and divides into three separate routes over 700km’s through the South West, Wheatbelt and Central regions for five days, arriving in Perth on Saturday 27 March. Last year, the Hawaiian Ride for Youth raised $1.9 million to support Youth Focus.

Youth Focus is a friendly, unique organisation supporting vulnerable young people in Western Australia.

Youth Focus operates with a team of highly trained and skilled psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists. They provide a range of early intervention and prevention services free of charge to young people and their families.

A big thank you to our Year 8 Band for keeping the students entertained during the morning. NASHS is proud to host the Hawaiian Ride opening for Youth once again this year and support the essential services of Youth Focus.

Mr Harrison
Student Services Coordinator Lower School

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Thank you to all 200 plus year 8 and 9 students who attended the Maths Show on Wednesday the 24th March. Your behaviour and attentiveness showed our values of BE YOUR BEST and BE RESPECTFUL. Well done. Thank you also to the staff who made the activity possible.

The show looked at Maths in many contexts. Also, it highlighted some outstanding female Mathematicians, although my personal favourite Katherine Johnson, did not get a mention.

There was also an interesting historical problem known as “The Bridges of Königsberg”. In the 18th century, the people of Konigsberg, now known as Kaliningrad in Russia, would take a stroll around the bridges. The question was could you take a stroll and cross each bridge only once?

This Mathematics is now known as Graph Theory. The Königsberg Bridge problem can be represented as a graph consisting of nodes (vertices) representing the landmasses and arcs (edges) representing the bridges.

Can you solve the problem? 

If not, what could you add to solve it?

Just a reminder that Mathletics is available to all students from Year 7-10. Please contact your child’s Maths teacher for more information. Mathletics is set with appropriate activities and has an inbuilt help section when students encounter difficulties. PLEASE access this great resource.

COMPETITION TIME

1. Answer the Königsberg Bridge problem above.

2. Write exactly 50 words about my favourite Mathematician, Katherine Johnson.

Drop your answers into the Maths Office by the end of week 2, Term 2, to go in the draw for prizes and reward points. You can do one or both questions, but submit on separate pieces of paper to increase your winning probability.

Joanne Stevens
HOLA Mathematics

Why Did You Call Me That

The Year 7 classes are exploring Baby-names. Researching the history of our names and looking at the historical popularity of baby names. We have been comparing our names with those from Australia in 2017 and will eventually with names given in the 1950s.

Using Excel spreadsheets and based on the data sets' statistical features, the students have been building "composite names" to represent their class, which will be presented to their peers for evaluation. So, if you want to know something about baby names, ask a Year 7!

Brent Parkin
Mathematics Teacher

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Term 1 2021

The North Albany Clontarf Academy have had a term full of activities, excursions and camps. The activities held every week are lunches, morning games and after school activities. Our morning games (training) are Wednesday’s and Friday’s.

On these two mornings, we either play football or basketball. After the games, we follow up with a big breakfast so the members are ready for school. Our after school activities vary from cooking, sport and recreational activities.

The academy has also held two excursions for the year 7 and 8 Clontarf members. Our first excursion was an induction day into Clontarf. This is an important day as this is a great chance for the new members to gain an insight into what Clontarf is and what we can do to help them succeed at high school.

The North Albany academy made a basketball team of year 7 and 8’s and travelled to Denmark Senior High School, played a game, and then celebrated with a barbeque afterwards. The day was great, with plenty of fun. 

The academy also went on three camps in term one. The first was a leadership camp to Dwellingup and Mandurah. This was a fantastic experience for our year 11 members. They participated in an amazing race leadership activity, goal setting for 2021 and beyond, surfing, and visiting the Mandurah City Chambers, where Mayor Rhys Williams gave a tour and talked about his life journey.

The North Albany academy also travelled to Perth for two football carnivals, a junior and a senior. The junior carnival was held at Gwynne Park in Armadale, hosted by the Cecil Andrews Clontarf Academy. Seventeen Clontarf academies participated on the day. North Albany joined up with Collie; although we had plenty of fun on the day, we could not get a win.

Up next was the senior camp. The Clontarf Cup is an annual event held by the Clontarf Foundation. The games were played at Trinity sports grounds. Eighteen academies played on the day. This time North Albany joined up with Narrogin and Katanning, and we came away with the “B” Division Cup win.

Peter Watters
Director North Albany Academy

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Week-9  the year 11 ATAR Biology students go on a 3-day camp out to Cape Riche with their teacher Mr Ireland and fellow Science teacher Mrs North. The camp will enable them to practise the skills required for the biology course such as GPS navigation, animal identification, plastic sampling using quadrats and underwater fish surveying.

This is a much-anticipated part of the course, which was unfortunately cancelled last year due to Covid-19, so 3 year 12 Biology students have chosen to participate this year. 

Students have been practising some of these skills in the bushland next to the school. They have deployed specially designed cameras to film the activities of wildlife in the area and have measured out quadrats to survey the amount and type of vegetation growing.

As you can see from the photos, the cameras have shown there is a population of southern brown bandicoot (also known as Qwenda or Isoodon obesulus) that frequent the area.

Less desirable is the appearance of a cat with what appears to be a lizard in its mouth. A timely reminder about the damage these animals can do and why it is best to always keep them inside.  

We hope that all students make the most of this valuable experience and the weather is sunny! 

Jessica Lewis
Biology and Science Teacher

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It was a beautiful, if muggy, night for the 2021 Year 12 Ball. Students arrived at the Albany Entertainment Centre in a variety of classic cars to be met by staff and family eager to see them dressed in all their finery.

NASHS had extended an invitation to the captains of the other Albany schools who were happy to join us and were great representatives of their own Year 12 cohorts. 

After taking a year group photo, we walked through the entry and into the Kalyenup studio where the Ball working party had worked hard earlier in the day to set the 'up in lights' decoration. Thank you to those students who were able to make it down to help and also to Mums - Tania, Emma and Jo, who all assisted in making the night special.

The dancefloor was full from the start thanks to our enthusiastic DJ, Mr Le Page, as everyone enjoyed rocking to old and new songs. Kaelin and Ameilia returned to do wandering photo duties and many students made their way down to Mr Marchment to get their photos taken in a more formal setting.

Making the selection of Belle and Beau was difficult as there were so many students who not only looked amazing but also made the staff very proud. Cheyenne was selected Belle of the Ball and Tony was voted Beau of the Ball. We had many people who showed us their fancy footwork, with Sonya, Xavier and Brooke all taking the honours for their dance moves and Riley and Tasharn proving to be the life of the Ball. Jorja and Thomas and Emmali and Lucas won the votes for cutest couples.

By 9.30 pm the feet were getting sore and the students said their farewells. A number of students made the point of thanking staff as they left, which was really appreciated, and I would like to add my thanks to the staff who not only assisted in making the night so wonderful but also those who helped behind the scenes.

I am so proud to be a part of the NASHS community and to show Albany how incredible the students are, the AEC staff made time to let us know how respectful and thoughtful our students were and how they enjoyed working with us.

Well done Class of 2021!

Ms Duthie
Student Services Coordinator Upper School

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This year we have twenty-six students studying online through the School of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE) and the Gifted and Talented program. 

The students are timetabled in the library for their Webex and independent study classes. Despite a difficult start at the beginning of the school year due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Perth, all of our students have settled into their online studies remarkably well, demonstrating patience and responsibility as they adjust to a new way of learning. 

Members of the Regional Learning Specialist team and staff from SIDE have already made arrangements to visit our school to provide additional support to these students, and we wish them well for the coming year.

This is the second year of the Young Writers Online program, organised by Ms Morgan and held this year in the Library VC rooms.  The program presents videos of authors who write young adult fiction. 

Students are able to listen to extracts read by the authors, and are then taken through a series of workshops which allow them to develop ideas of their own.  Well-known local author Diane Wolfer is the first author for the 2021 program.  The day was a great success, and we are looking forward to published work from this enthusiastic group in third term.

To celebrate our school values, we are currently asking for hand-written contributions on green leaf-shaped paper outlining our school value be responsible.  These messages will be added to the pink heart-shaped ‘leaves’ expressing our value be kind.  As the year goes on our tree will gain more ‘leaves’ to fully reflect all of our school values.  Watch this space!

I have presented some sessions to our Year 11 & 12 ATAR students on using resources effectively to support their studies.  Using our digital databases, which are available 24/7, provides an excellent start to any research task.  These databases have appropriate material for students from all years, and the information contained is reliable, relevant, accurate, authoritative and up-to-date.  The library catalogue is also a very useful tool and can search both our print and digital collections.  These resources are available to all our students, and can be shared at home with other family members.  If any student needs help activating their ClickView account or accessing any of our digital collections, please come to the library for assistance.

Don’t forget to login to the NASHS website for access to school information, and visit the library pages to access the Digital resources & links.  The library Research page is also very useful as it has a wealth of information and links covering all aspects of the research process.

We have had a busy and productive start to the school year.  I hope everyone has downloaded the ePlatform app so that they are able to access our collection of ebooks and eaudiobooks over the holidays.

Don't forget, the library is now the place to go if your student needs to order a new smartrider card. 

Wishing you all a safe and happy break.

Kind regards

Barbara McNeill
Head of Library Services

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After Covid hit pause on Youth Week events last year, preparations for Albany’s youth to celebrate the 2021 festivities are coming to life.
Running from April 9 to April 16, Youth Week is an annual state-wide celebration of the positive contributions young people make to our community. In line with this year’s theme of Our Path, Albany’s Youth Week events acknowledge the importance of our youth coming together to create a community that will empower the future direction of Albany.

The City of Albany has partnered with multiple agencies to create a full calendar of events which will include workshops, a movie and games night, live performances and more for youth aged 10-25 years.

Cloudy with a Chance of Music festival arrives at Eyre Park on April 10, bringing the area alive with creative workshops, basketball competitions, summer skate sessions, market stalls and live music.

Acting Manager Community Development, Engagement and Events Rani Param said Youth Week is a fantastic opportunity for youth to get involved in the community.

“We ensure that Albany’s youth are deeply involved in the planning and delivery of these events, and it’s great to see them take on the challenge so willingly every year,” she said.

“The youth of Albany represent such a diverse group of people, so having their input into the Youth Week program holds a lot of value.”

Albany’s Youth Week events are inclusive of all abilities, race, cultural background, religions, sexuality and gender; with most of the activities at no, or low cost.

For more information and the list of events, click here

These events are proudly sponsored by the Department of Communities, Rio Tinto and the City of Albany.

City of Albany

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Spencer Park Dental Therapy Centre will be closed week one and OPEN week two during the school holidays. If you have a dental emergency during our closure please contact Yakamia Dental Therapy Centre on 9841 3498.

All appointments are now sent to your home address. If you have moved in the last few years we may not have your correct address and your child could miss out on their check-up.

If you no longer intend to use our service please let us know as soon as possible as your valuable appointment could be given to someone in need. Your child is eligible to attend a Dental Therapy Centre from ages 5 to 17.

Please contact us to update your details either by phone: 9841 3967 or e-mail: spencerparkdtc@ health.wa.gov.au

The staff at Spencer Park Dental Therapy Centre would like to wish all children and parents a happy and safe break 

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Our Standing Strong 'Strength from Within' Easter Holiday Workshops are coming to Gilcreek Scout Camp, Albany proudly supported by Scouts WA.

We have 2.5hr Taster Workshops available for girls ages 6-10yrs & 11-15yrs, on Wednesday 14th April in the school holidays.
For more information Click Here

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Walk, ride or catch the bus instead.  Active transport to school has a range of benefits, including keeping kids more active, reducing traffic congestion, and helping students arrive at school ready to learn.

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