Our School News

Earlier this year, a major presentation evening was planned in Sydney to honour the 2019 winners of the History Teachers Association NSW competitions. Alstonville High School’s own Finlay Ball received 1st place in the state-wide competition for the Extension Essay Prize. Although COVID-19 interfered with the ceremony, Finn’s winning essay – along with a short reflective piece – have now been published in the latest edition of the Teaching History magazine. To read Finn’s short piece, and see our own Extension History teacher Janita Gordon, please follow the link below to the school website. Also included is the link to see Finn and Janita honoured on the HTANSW Extension Prize website. Congratulations to Finn, and to Mrs Gordon

http://www.htansw.asn.au/extension-prize

Cows Create Careers Online Celebration  

Our agriculture students participated in an online presentation to receive awards for Cows Create Careers. The students were very appreciative of the catering and consistently demonstrated manners and thanks during this presentation.

We are very proud of the students for their efforts and the number of quality submissions they submitted. I acknowledge that these efforts contributed to the award of first place and a $500 prize for the school in the senior division and the 4 individual awards for the students

Ben Holmes

Year 12 Extension I English embarked on the production of an individual video essay with the aim of accounting for the value of their chosen texts within their elective, Reimagined Worlds. 

Captured here is a still of the final frame from Miss L Porter's superb rendering of her "synthesis illustrated with a single line". 

N Lincoln

AND The Winner is... CONGRATULATIONS to our ladies involved in this competition!

A very impressive submission by Clara Tolman, Zoe Fairfull and Annie Tolman has resulted in a $2000 prize awarded to the school for the "Women in Agriculture Pitch" competition.

The team took on the opportunity as an extension project during the difficult time of COVID-19. I am satisfied that my small suggestions during the planning stage did not end up being any part of their creative, original and exciting pitch - well done!

The funds are planned to be reserved to extend the students opportunities in agriculture through 2021 at this stage. Congratulations!

This is what the team had to say about their pitch:

We are excited to announce that your group was awarded first place for the Women in Agri-tech pitch competition. Your school will receive $2,000.
You have also won a place at our online Innovation bootcamp with River City Labs and we will be in touch to organise a date shortly. Thanks again for your great entry!
We were also very impressed with their idea, but also their video/pitch quality - a very worthy win. During the bootcamp, they will get assistance and go through the process of taking their idea to the next level. River City Labs work with lots of different innovators and entrepreneurs so your students should thoroughly enjoy the experience. We will be in touch with some potential dates to find a time that hopefully suits everyone.
Well Done Girls.

Women in agriculture pitch offers small groups of Year 7-10 female students from remote, regional and rural Australia the opportunity to share in $5000 of prize money and a free trip to Brisbane.

To enter the competition, students will need to develop their own agri-tech solution to a problem faced by the agricultural industry. They won’t need to actually build anything just yet but rather come up with a great idea that will work in theory.

Clara, Zoe and Annie, as part of an extension activity, created this video for their entry.  Mr Holmes has credited the girls saying the video has "substantial merit and has been produced to a high standard during a difficult period ( COVID-19) Well done girls"

Year 9 students are extending their Commercial Cropping and Poultry units of work with the use of technology and ecology to promote sustainable interactions between different enterprises on the diversified school farming system. 

Year 9 Agriculture: Commercial cropping snacking tomato enterprise.

From a $23 seedling purchase to a significant and profitable return. Students have learnt the stages of

1. investigating a market
2. matching an enterprise to existing conditions and equipment
3. establishing the enterprise
4. managing the project, harvest, quality control, grading, processing, marketing and gross margin analysis. 

Mr. Ben Holmes

Corn harvest, processing, quality control and consumption.

Year 9 students have developed an awareness of the production process using a corn crop. An understanding of food miles, spoilage, product specifications, quality control and taste testing has been conducted and the results are in! thumbs up. 

Corn production in year 9 has resulted in a high yield but also demonstrated some interesting experimentation on pollination and kernel setting with a braid used on the corn silks/beards

Library News

The library is more than just books and computers. Students are into our Lego Mindstorms, building and coding during recess.