Student Culture

2023 Leadership Summit Camp SYDNEY Scholarship
On behalf of Community Bank Scholarships program Ashwood High School is excited to offer four lucky students a fully funded place on the 2023 Magic Moments Youth Leadership and Business Summit Camp in Sydney.

When: Saturday 1 July to Wednesday 5 July (First week of school holidays)
Where: The Collaroy Centre, Collaroy, NSW
Who: 14 – 17 Year old youth who love to have fun while being inspired
What: Camp with inspiring speakers and activities for students wanting to develop leadership skills, learn more about themselves, learn about how you can create your own career through business. Flights, accommodation, food, event materials, pre & post-event programs fully funded through the scholarship.

After careful consideration, the successful applicants are:

Congratulations! We know you will represent Ashwood High School beautifully and we cannot wait to hear how it goes.

Ashwood High School is currently in the process of developing some new subjects offered at a VCE level, as we always strive to offer as many opportunities we possibly can. The Year 10s were given the opportunity to participate in a survey for New VCE Subject Proposals as Student Voice is highly valued. There were many new ideas bought forward by the student body, such as offering subjects including; Jewellery Design, Theatre Studies, Classical Studies, English Literature and English Language. These ideas have been heard and will be taken into consideration when developing the 2024 subjects. Thank you to all Year 10s who contributed their ideas.

On Thursday 11 May all students participated in the annual ‘Attitudes to School Survey’. The purpose of this survey is to obtain data from our student cohort on their views about school life. This includes valuable information on students’ connectedness to school, health and wellbeing, teaching and learning, to name a few. This was a successfully run day and an excellent way to obtain vital Student Voice data from which we analyse and in turn use the information improve teaching and learning practices at Ashwood High School. Thank you to all students for providing honest feedback as we strive for continuous improvement.

Lenore Twist
Student Voice, Agency and Inclusion

The Badminton Club started at the beginning of Term 2, playing after school on Mondays. The intention is to provide a safe place for students to get some indoors exercise and mix with other students. The club has been so popular with students that we have split it into two groups:

Years 7-9 on Mondays and
Years 10-12 on Fridays

(both after school in the gym). Some students are already quite proficient at the sport and others are beginners, but everyone is welcome. We have already seen tremendous improvement in everyones’ skill after just 3 weeks.

So far, students have mostly been practising their skills but we will start to play some social competition as skill levels increase. If you would like to join, please see me in G02 or send me an email through Compass and I will add you to the event so that it appears in your Compass calendar.

Bruce Verity
Badminton Club

After a strong start to the year in both attendance and enthusiasm, Chess Club has put our PFN donated sets to good use and begun our first tournament for the year, with entrants ranging from Year 7s to Year 12s (and two esteemed teachers). Our 25+ competitors have been organised into three divisions and will battle it out in a series of blitz chess games (with only 5 minutes total per player) over the next few weeks, masterfully administrated by Lucas Leventakis.

In other Chess Club news, we will still be operating as per normal for anyone who would like to learn, advance their skills or just to play. For tournament spectating or a game with some like-minded students, join us in the B Building at lunchtime on Wednesdays.

Rory Fahey
Chess Club

Daisy and the other students in the Newsletter Club have been working hard, dedicating their Thursday lunchtimes to working on the newsletter. The students have completed the first issue and already started working on the second issues, with 6 topics confirmed

Nicole Gladman
Newsletter Club

This year Ashwood High School has their first Aerobics Team. To begin the team, Ms Schinina and Ms Twist conducted try outs. For this process we allowed students to sign up and learn a section of an aerobics routine. We conducted a second try out which allowed students to show case their routine and skills. From this Ms Schinina and Ms Twist selected the following successful applicants:

Madeline Schaxmann
Lily Robertson
Eirni Vilianioti
Amasha Gunasekara
Jennifer Nguyen
Sophie Marshman
Gargi Karve
Nirvana Shpak

The amazing Aerobics Team have been working together twice a week to learn an aerobics routine. The team will be competing later in July against other schools, and will continue to train to be ready to compete. The aerobics team journey only begun in term two this year and they have already shown tremendous progress. Very exciting for Ashwood High School to begin this aerobics journey and all aerobic team members are very passionate to learn, improve and compete.

Zoe Schinina
Aerobics Club

A-Z Club is a safe space for students to come together and meet new peers, share stories and bring topics for discussions. As a group, we will also be planning for important events coming up in our school calendar.

Elisa Jones-Arango
A-Z Club

Art Club has been going really well with students attending regularly, exploring their creativity beyond the school curriculum in G09 at lunchtime on Tuesdays. Students have been working on folio work from classes to enhance their academic outcomes and personalised creative projects to foster voice, agency and wellbeing. Well done to all students who have attended Art Club, your contributions are highly valued. Here are some students’ work examples.

Jessica Lindholm
Art Club

We are pleased to report that the International Student Homework Club has made significant progress and exciting changes over the past few weeks. Following discussions with parents and students, we have made the decision to no longer make the club compulsory for Year 11 students, as we believe they are young adults who should have the flexibility to manage their own study time. This change has been well-received by students, who appreciate the increased autonomy and freedom.

For Year 10 students, we have introduced a new focus on improving their understanding of key subject-specific vocabulary. Many students have expressed difficulties with terminologies across all subjects, and we believe that building a solid foundation of subject-specific vocabulary is essential for success in these subjects. During the Homework Club sessions, we are using this time to explain new terms and concepts and teach students how to build up their glossary. We are also encouraging students to read textbooks and the teaching resources their class teachers have nominated, which will help them to further improve their understanding of the subject matter.

We will continue to monitor the progress of the club and make adjustments as needed to ensure that our students are getting the most out of their time with us.

Yuhang Wang
International Student Homework Club

Whilst for many, winter is a time to stay under the doona and hide from the cold, the Ashwood Running Club powers on! To accommodate the occasional rainy day, we will be mixing up our lap running with indoor intervals and some hill sprints over the next two terms.

Three tips to motivate yourself to run when it gets a bit cold:

Make it easy to choose exercise -don’t decide if you’re going to run or not until you are standing in your running gear outside your front door.
Tag a friend – make it a deal that you’ll meet your running buddy. If you’re accountable to more than just yourself, then you’re more likely to stick with it.
Imagine the high – running in cold weather is really satisfying: far more satisfying in fact that when the weather is bright and sunny. In the morning, imagine how good you;ll feel having pushed through and braved the morning chill.

As always, Ashwood Running Club meets outside the gym at 7:30 every Friday morning for a warm up and run. Get your shoes on and we’ll see you there!

Dominic Holloway and Jeffrey Newman
Running Club – Running through winter!

At E-sports Club, a lot students have been enjoying playing Minecraft where they are all a part of the same world in the game and is proving to be a lot of fun. Other students have pre-downloaded games on their laptops and play those, or also access appropriate-age games on the internet.

We will sometimes talk about which games we are currently playing as well, which is creating an environment where everyone feels supported and connected with their peers and fellow gamers here at Ashwood High School, which is great to see.

Daniel McBride
E-Sports Club

DRAMA CLUB: BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER
Drama Club is off to a wonderful start in Term 2. In our initial meetings, the students worked together to brainstorm ideas for an ensemble performance they could create together. After much discussion and deliberation, the team decided upon an idea and bounced straight into action. The appointed director, Leah Ried (Year 10) and chief writer, Jane Lee (Year 8) organised auditions the following week and now rehearsals have begun!

“The play we will be performing is a self-written comedy titled ‘An Incompetent Crime’. As the name would suggest, it is a story of incompetence displayed all around. Initially, an obvious kidnapping takes place in the prime centre of a shopping mall, right beside a group of people, and yet nobody appears to notice. Nobody, that is, except a 5-year-old child who just so happens to have memorised the phone number of the local detective, and rings her up to come and investigate. Unfortunately, it so happens that the detective has no idea what she is doing, and responsibility once again falls in the child’s hands to help rescue the kidnappees. However, while all this is taking place, the kidnappees are working out their own way to escape from the kidnapper, using the one quality they have in common – the power of being incredibly annoying!” Leah Ried (Director)

The final performance date will be confirmed on Compass in the coming weeks. It will be at a lunchtime so as many students can enjoy the brilliance of our future actors as possible. As always, anyone is welcome to join us on a Wednesday lunchtime. See you in the PAC!

Michelle Leane
Drama Club

SCHOOL PRODUCTION
We’re off (to see the Wizard) and running!

Promotional Artwork by the very talented Ava Lillywhite (Year 10)

After a whirlwind of auditions and planning in Term 1, Term 2 has seen the beginning of amazing work from our AMAZING (and I mean AMAZING) cast of The Wizard of Oz 2023. With rehearsals taking place on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school and even some lunchtimes, the students are demonstrating excitement, passion, and commitment to our show. Our choreographer, Ruby Cameron, has been coaching our chorus though funky dances and Navin Gulavita has been working tirelessly with the production orchestra. Even with the help of our fabulous Music Director, Liam Headland, this show’s musical score is not for the feint hearted and is showcasing the skills of our many talented musicians. Great things cooking, we can’t wait for September!

All show and ticket information will be posted via Compass in the coming weeks.

There’s no place like home!

Michelle Leane
Musical Production