Newsletter- Term 2 Week 4 2024

Over the course of the last week, it has been great to witness and hear about such amazing student achievements. Firstly, it was really pleasing to hear how well our students conducted themselves at the District Athletics. Last Thursday we had over sixty students participate in the athletics against fellow state schools in our region, and it was reported to me that the Newcomb Secondary College students were the best presented in uniform, most supportive of their peers and extremely respectful of other participants, competitors, and the event facilitators/ organisers. Congratulations to all involved!

Equally, on Tuesday of last week, I was privileged to be able to enjoy a musical performance from our band in the college auditorium. The performance, which is the weekly rehearsal was further evidence of the amazing skills and talents of our students. I have said this before, and I will say it again, I am always envious of students with such musical talent- I wish I had of learnt an instrument when I was a student at Newcomb Secondary College!

Furthermore, on Friday last week, we welcomed home our Year 9/10 Outdoor Education students from their 3-day bushwalk adventure along the Great Ocean Road. The bushwalk, led by Mr Goward, Mrs Wray and Mr Relouw was a great success filled with many highlights- it was the first time that Newcomb Secondary College students have trekked the 30+ kilometres between Johanna and Cape Otway. Accounts from those involved said that it was an amazing experience, and one that they (apart from tight calf muscles from walking along the sand) thoroughly enjoyed!

I am pleased to be able to share the progress on our facility upgrades. You will have noticed Plan Group Construction company on site building our bike shed adjacent to the Eastern Oval carpark roundabout. As I write this article for the newsletter, the slab has been poured and steel framing is due to be installed next week. This is stage one of the four stage facility upgrades, with the next phases to include our new dual Basketball courts, college fence line and 350 new lockers. I thank students, staff, and our community for making the necessary adjustments to movement around the college during the works thus far and into the future. I will keep you all posted on the progress over the coming weeks.

Regards,

Scott McLeod

Principal

Newcomb Secondary College

81-85 Bellarine Highway | Newcomb 3219

T: (03) 5248 1400 | F: (03) 5248352

Creating Positive Futures

Dear parents and caregivers,

Welcome back to Term 2! I hope that you had a great Easter break.

In Term 1 of 2024, across all year levels, 64% of absences remain unexplained – something that we hope our college community can assist us with by accessing Compass and attending to your student’s absence reason.

Of the absences provided with a reason, 20% are due to Medical, 10% listed as Parent Choice (unapproved) and a combined 6% noted as Truancy, Refusal or Family Holiday.

At Newcomb Secondary College, we strive for high attendance to support your child’s learning, and social, emotional and mental wellbeing. We endeavour to work with and support all families in our community; we all want and need to do better for our students.

We can provide the best supports for students and families when absences are explained. Protecting the safety and well-being of students through the reporting and monitoring of absenteeism is the responsibility of both parents/carers and Newcomb Secondary College.

Communication is a critical component in ensuring all students can maximise their learning and engagement. If your student is struggling with attendance due to anxiety, health, truancy, refusal or another barrier, please let us know so we can work together to support your student. We understand that there are barriers preventing attendance and prioritise support for those families. There are a range of resources available to support you with helping students to re-engage and improve school attendance.

• 95% attendance rate is the equivalent of missing 10 days per year.
• 90% = 1 day per fortnight or 20 days per year.
• 85% = 30 days per year (chronically absent)
• 80% = one day per week or 40 days per year.

Research has shown that consistent student attendance at school is directly linked to better health, social and employment outcomes.

We have 30 students with perfect attendance of 100% and 130 students above 95%; a huge congratulations and thank you to these students and their families.

A few friendly reminders:

• If your student has any outstanding unexplained absences for Term 1, please access the Compass portal to view and enter reasons for these absences.
• If your student must be absent, please contact the office as soon as possible on the same day.
• Please avoid booking family holidays during the school term.
• Please aim to only keep students home if they are too unwell to attend.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your student’s attendance, or if you or your student requires any support with school refusal, please contact the school on (03) 5248 1400 or the school’s attendance officer.

Newcomb Secondary College is fortunate enough to have a Doctors in Schools Program running 2 days a week.

We have both a GP, and Mental Health Nurse that attend onsite to run a clinic on a Tuesday and Wednesday. This clinic is for any student in Years 7-12. The appointments are bulk billed, meaning that there is no cost to families.

Appointments can be made by either contacting the schools Wellbeing Team or calling Bellarine Community Health on 5253 0400.

Students may access this service to address any of the following:

• Physical pain or issues
• Health lifestyle (sleep, diet, nutrition, exercise)
• Mental health
• Sexual health and contraception
• Sexuality and gender identity
• Body image
• Scripts

If you would like to know more, please contact Jane Osborne in our Wellbeing Team.

Jane can either be reached by contacting the school office, or via email at jane.osborne@education.vic.gov.au

Jane Osborne

Newcomb Secondary College

Student Wellbeing & Engagement

Ph: 5248 1400 | M: 0409 960 129

E: Jane.Osborne@education.vic.gov.au

Welcome!

This health content is brought to you by Doctors in Secondary School.

Please find the selected resources from your healthcare team below. These resources offer a trusted source of relevant health information. We hope you find them helpful and informative.

For further discussions about this topic, please contact the DiSS GP and Nurse at your school.

Please remember that the information provided is not a substitute for diagnosis, treatment or medical advice by your health care professional. If you have any concerns about your health, visit your health professional or, in an emergency, call 000 (Australian residents).

This week's topic is: Mental illness in younger people.

Please click on the link below or scan the QR code to access the information sheets.

GoShare Healthcare (realtimehealth.com)

COGG 2024 Term 2 Regional Parenting Calendar

Additional Parent Education opportunities

Dear Parents,

Please see the below information about a few upcoming opportunities for parents to attend free webinars through Wellio.

Phones & Social Media: Wellio Parent Webinar: Thursday 14 May at 6:30pm (AEDT)

• Registration Link (so that they can be sent the recording): https://www.wellioeducation.com/en_au/webinars

Join Wellio for a free webinar to learn practical strategies that will help your children manage phone addiction and social media.

• Reality vs Social Media: we discuss how students compare their lives with what they see on social media and the impact this has on their self esteem. We'll share 3 simple strategies to keep them on track.
• Technology and Sleep: 73% of teenagers aren't getting enough sleep and their devices are a primary cause. We explain how you can limit the impact.
• Techniques to manage anxiety: A toolkit of strategies that you can use to help your child manage and prevent anxiety developing as a result of social media and phone use..

2024 Parent Webinar Schedule:

Please see below for the dates for our other free parent webinars running across the year:

• Tuesday 14th May 6:30pm - Phones & Social Media
• Thursday 29th August 6:30pm - Building Healthy Relationships
• Thursday 31st October 6:30pm - Resilience & Setbacks

Parents can register to attend any or all of these sessions here

If you would like to find out more please contact or Leader of Wellbeing, Jane Osborne.

On Thursday the 2nd of May, 59 of our students headed to Interschool Athletics. congratulations to Bailey Thomas and Chantelle Brundall in Javelin, Dakota Harrington in the 100m and 200m, Katelin Cobb in Shot Put, Noah Jackson in the 400m, Bailey Thomas in High Jump. These are the students who came first in their events. Well done to all of the students who took time out of their day to come along and support the school, congratulations to all other students who placed or had a go in their events. Newcomb Secondary College were placed 2nd in the Senior Girls Division. Thank you for representing the school so well and we hope to see you there again next year!!

Remy Ohara (House Captain)

As part of Newcomb Secondary’s Head Start Program, Alex has been at Cross Laminated Offsite Solutions (CLOS) on structured workplace learning (SWL) to help him gain practical skills in the building and construction sector.

Alex is pictured measuring and cutting recycled timber to 3 different lengths to be used as cladding on the portable living spaces CLOS manufactures in the old FORD factory in North Geelong.

A big thank you to Renee and John at CLOS for having Alex on site each week.

Kind regards,

Glenn Robertson

Head Start Coordinator

M: 0429 525 329

Newcomb Secondary College

Bellarine Secondary College

Nelson Park School

Northern Bay College

The After School Homework Club is in Room B2 every day except Thursdays. Students are welcome to attend to catch up on classwork, complete homework, receive individual tutoring or to work with classmates on a group project. They may attend for 15 minutes to sort out just one problem or they may attend right up to 5pm to accomplish a greater amount of learning. Those who attend will be awarded a positive learning chronicle (with reward token) and will be offered food. 

Mr Curnick

We’re excited to let you know that entries for the 2024 Insight Creative Writing Competition are OPEN. If we have any budding writers from Years 7–12 at our school, please enter! We’d love to see your work.

Here is a quick reminder of the guidelines Insight have made to help students get even more creative with their entries.

• All year levels have an upper limit of 1400 words. There is no minimum word limit.
• We accept other creative writing forms in addition to short stories, including poems, scripts and more.
• This year’s theme (Beauty in the unknown) is optional, giving entrants the freedom to write about anything that inspires them.

To download the submission form and view all conditions of entry, please click below.

DOWNLOAD CONDITIONS OF ENTRY AND SUBMISSION FORM

COMPETITION KEY DATES

Entries open: 18 March 2024
Entries close: 1 September 2024
Longlist announcement: 18 October 2024
Shortlist announcement: 1 November 2024
Awards ceremony: TBA

We’re looking forward to hearing about your stories soon! Good Luck!

Here are some more contact details for the Insight Team

INSIGHT PUBLICATIONS

3/350 Charman Road, Cheltenham 3192 VIC AUSTRALIA

p. +61 3 8571 4950 | m. 0413 131 842 | w. www.insightpublications.com.au

We know access to high-speed broadband is a necessity in the 21^st Century. Yet sadly many families and school students are still unable to access the internet at home and that this can place students at a significant disadvantage.

The Albanese Government is providing up to 30,000 families with free broadband for one year, as part of their plan for a better National Broadband Network (NBN). Already, 1,000 families now have home internet thanks to the School Student Broadband Initiative.

This helps ensure that students can reach their full potential, by helping them to stay connected at home so they don’t fall behind.

To check your eligibility please refer to the contact details below:

We are very fortunate to have strong links with our neighbouring Geelong Regional Library Corporation branch at Newcomb. The Children's and Youth Services Librarian, Ms Laura Farrington, joins us fortnightly to run engaging and interactive sessions promoting genres and doing related craft activities! Laura has a merry band of students who regularly come to her sessions and we invite other students to join us in the school library at 1 p.m. on the dates below! Special activities happen at Easter, Halloween and Christmas with the odd Literature Trivia game throughout the year to spice things up. 

This term we have a focus on Manga and Anime.

Manga VS Anime theme:  4 sessions this term

24/04 – Manga Chat, Rank your Favourite Manga,

08/05 – Manga Drawing

05/06 – Chibi Paper Craft

19/06 – Manga Trivia: Manga VS Anime

This year Newcomb Secondary College students are participating in the Children's Book Council of Australia's Shadow Judging program with 2 groups casting their votes on the best Australian books published in 2023. We are focussing on 2 categories 'Older Readers fiction' and 'Picture books' which are picture books for older readers. Our Year 7s and students in Ms Wray's Creative Writing elective unit will experience the 6 shortlisted books in the 2 categories, consider the official judging criteria and cast their votes for which books they feel should win. Each group will make creative responses to their favourite shortlisted books (poems, sculptures, fanfiction for example) and we will have celebrations on the day that the votes come out from the CBCA (Term 3). We are looking forward to exhibiting the creative responses at school. Our Australian authors and illustrators are greatly supported by these annual competitions and the Students Choice awards are very important. For further information check out the Children's Book Council of Australia's Website about Shadow Judging. Students will share their creative responses and feedback about the books as they go (on this library page of the Newcomb Secondary College newsletter)!

CBCA Sun Project: Shadow Judging – Young voices welcome here

Last chance! - applications close THIS Sunday at 9pm!!!!