Next P&C Meeting
 

P&C meetings are held at 7pm on Tuesday of every week 3 and week 8 of term. For the foreseeable future, they are now only held online via the  Microsoft Teams meeting at this link. The next meeting is on Tuesday 25 October.

The ACT Education Directorate does not provide any insurance cover for injury, disease or illness to students resulting from school activities or school-organised excursions. Claims for compensation are met where there is a legal liability to do so. Liability is not automatic and depends on the circumstances in which any injury, disease or illness was sustained.

As there is no automatic insurance cover for personal injury if your child is injured at school or during a school organised activity/excursion you should therefore consider whether taking out personal insurance cover for your child is warranted.

This insurance might cover contingencies including medical/hospital expenses, ambulance transport outside the ACT, and cancellation of transport/accommodation or loss of/damage to luggage.

The ACT Ambulance Service provides free ambulance transport for students who are injured or suddenly become ill at school or during an approved school organised activity within the ACT.

Parents and students are advised that Lyneham High School staff will take all reasonable steps to keep personal property safe. However, Lyneham High School does not provide insurance cover to automatically compensate for the loss, damage or theft of bicycles or any other personal property, nor will they be legally liable for their loss.

Parents and students are advised:

 
Lyneham High School has engaged the services of Paul Dillon to speak with our year 10 students on Tuesday 25 October.

Paul Dillon has been working in drug education for more than 25 years. Through his own business, Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia (DARTA) he has been contracted by many agencies and organisations across the country to give regular updates on current drug trends within the community. He continues to work with many school communities across the country to ensure that they have access to good quality information and best practice drug education.
 
Year 10 Presentation
Young people, alcohol and risk taking: Looking after your mates

Focussing primarily on alcohol, this introductory session attempts to debunk some of the myths in this area, particularly around how to look after friends. To help ensure young people make healthier choices, accurate, up-to-date and credible information is provided, including the latest prevalence rates of alcohol and other drug use by secondary school students, with a focus on ‘positive norms’, i.e., how many young people choose not to drink alcohol or use other drugs. Basic life skills will also be discussed around alcohol-related emergencies, including knowing when to call an ambulance.
 
You can access more information about Paul at http://darta.net.au/

The PBL Team is very excited to share that we have started with our Acknowledgement System Trial!
 
Trial Date: Monday 17 October Week 2 – Friday 28 October Week 3  
 
Over this two week trial, students will be earning tokens in acknowledgement for showing respectful, responsible and learning behaviours. Students will need to place their tokens in the PBL Token Box at the Front Office for their token to be counted towards the school’s goal. These tokens will be regularly counted by the PBL team and the results will be displayed for the students to see. If enough tokens are returned to the PBL Token Box, the whole school wins an extended lunch on Friday Week 4!

Lyneham High School enjoyed a very busy term 3 in school sport with many of our students involved in one day carnivals and interstate sporting competitions.

Futsal

Lyneham High School entered 7/8 and 9/10 boys teams into the ACT Futsal State Titles held at the Mpowerdome in Fadden. Both teams performed admirably throughout the group stage of the competition, gaining some very strong results and demonstrating their capacity to play as a team. In the final stages of the competition both teams were eliminated in the quarter finals, coincidently by penalty shoot outs. Overall, to make the quarter finals playing a new style of Futsal will certainly benefit the teams as they take a lot out of the experience. Thank you to Mr Davoren for coaching the team.

Table Tennis

9/10s & Para

On a wonderful day the year 9/10 mainstream boys took out 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for the ACT Table Tennis Championships, and the Para team also took out 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Massive congratulations to all on a massive achievement.

Football

7/8 Boys

In a day that had testing conditions with cold and wet weather, the 7/8 boys turned up ready to play in their football Gala Day. The day began with a loss to Harrison, followed by a close encounter but loss to Canberra High. The boys pulled together straight away to play against Melba Copeland and win 3-0. Based on points the boys managed to make it to the semi finals narrowly and went down to a well drilled Daramarlan. We are very much looking forward to seeing the boys progression and also potentially reinstating the Bill Turner Cup squad for next year!

9/10 Boys

On Wednesday week five this term, I was fortunate enough to take the 9/10 Boys Football team to Dickson for the Northside Schools competition. The day started as a great success, as the boys won all their pool play matches. Unfortunately the boys lost the semi-final, finishing third and missing out on the ACT championships. Although the boys were pretty upset not progressing through, they all had a really fun day and were really well behaved. Mr Kelly.  

Athletics

After a successful School Carnival & North Region Track & Field meet. Lyneham took 24 students to the ACT Track and Field event, along with one student who attended the 12 & under ACT carnival. A massive congratulations to all who participated in both events. These are some of the wonderful highlights of students who placed in the top half of their individual events: 

Sierra Jaques came first in the 100m, 200m, 400m.
Claudia Todd came fourth in the 400m.
Abbey Sparkman third in the High Jump.
Brayden Worth third in the 100m, 200m,  Sprint. Second in the 400m. Second in Discus & fourth in the Javelin Throw.  
Zac Barwell fifth in the 400m. Sixth in the 800m.
Advit Chugh fourth in the 800m Run.
Jett Barker third in the 800m & 1500m 
Satya Yogeswaran Second in the 1500m
Ollie Barker fourth in the 1500m.
Oliver New fourth in the High Jump. 
Mathias Lill fifth in the Long Jump & Triple Jump.

It has been a wonderful term of Track & Field and congratulations to especially our year 10 students who have represented Lyneham High School for the very last time. We are looking forward to seeing the wonderful improvements and efforts in next years Track & Field Carnivals.

Heather Mutton, Thu Hoang & Nathan Blackburn.

Looking forward to our last term of school sport with sports like touch football, badminton, basketball, softball & tennis.

Happy term 4

Nathan Blackburn
Lyneham High School Sports Coordinator

On Friday 16 September the year 9 and 10 DARE boys put on a charity breakfast to raise money for the ACT Domestic Violence Crisis Service (DVCS). 

 

Indonesian

We had the pleasure of having Pak Caspian Jacobsen in our classes. As a former Indonesian student at Lyneham High School, he was able to show the relevance and significance of language learning in the real world. Pak Caspian shared many wonderful insights on his travels and his Indonesian studies. We would like to thank Pak Caspian for his amazing efforts over the last 4 weeks of school.

The year 9/10 Indonesian class were invited to an authentic lunch at Kopiku Café, O’Connor. They were able to test their fluency and proficiency by ordering in Indonesian. Some of the main highlights of the day were the delicious rendang, nasi goreng and mie soto. It was definitely a treat for all.

The ANU Asia Pacific Day has been an annual favourite for senior Indonesian students. This year, we were impressed by the range of language workshops and lectures on Asia and the Pacific. Students were also given relevant pathway information for continuing students of languages in year 11 and 12. More information about extensions courses in Indonesian can be found on the ANU website.

Our students have the opportunity to share their views about Lyneham High School via the QR Code, this link or in their year group Google Classroom. This is a chance to for them to give suggestions, feedback, complaints or a thankyou.
 

This article is reproduced with permission from Generation Next. Generation Next is dedicated to providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people and a great source of information for teachers and parents. For more articles and information visit their website at https://www.generationnext.com.au/
 
Two-thirds of young people experience levels of exam stress that mental health organisation ReachOut describes as “worrying”.

Research shows high levels of exam stress can interfere with attention and reduce working memory, leading to lower performance. Early experiences of anxiety and stress can also set a precedent for mental-health problems in adulthood.

But how we see stress can actually make a difference to the way it affects us. Research shows if we believe stress is a helpful response that will increase our performance in a challenging event, it can be a tool that works to our advantage.

From good stress to bad stress

Stress is a normal experience when we have a challenging event. We can experience stress when learning something new, starting a new job or being in a race.

Our experience of “stress” is actually our body getting us ready to take on the challenge. A stress response is helpful as it can increase oxygen to the brain and improve attention, focus, energy and determination.

The runner in a race needs to be “stressed” to compete successfully. The young person sitting in an exam room needs it too.

Studies show people who are clear about their feelings are more likely to thrive on anxiety and stress and possibly use these to achieve their goals and find satisfaction at work.

Stress and anxiety can work for you. But they become bad when we evaluate events as a threat rather than a challenge and when we believe we don’t have enough resources to cope.

Exams are often treated as a threat because there is potential harm or loss related to our self-worth, identity, and commitments, goals and dreams. If we fail, we think we are a failure and we may never get the future we had hoped for. Our whole life is at stake.

How do we make stress good?

To put it simply, stress can be good if we believe it’s good. It’ll work for us if we develop a mindset that stress helps our performance, health and well-being (rather than seeing it as debilitating).

In a study from the United States, one group of young people were given information about stress before sitting an exam. The reading material explained stress was not harmful, but that it had evolved to help us cope and perform better. Another group were told to just ignore stress and suppress their emotions.

Researchers found the first group performed significantly better in the exam (average five marks improvement) than the group who used the ignore-and-relax approach.
In another study of exam stress, students who saw stress as an opportunity and used it for self-growth had increased performance and decreased emotional exhaustion. But students who saw stress as a threat showed decreased effort and performance.

These studies didn’t examine how to eliminate exam stress. Instead they examined a change in the way students responded to it. Here are some tips for you use stress to your advantage.

Four ways to make stress work for you

1.    Read your body differently

Start to read your stress response as being there to help you prepare for the challenge. Instead of seeing it as a threat, try to see it as a coping tool. When you are experiencing stress, you can say to yourself:

I am feeling a little uncomfortable; my heart is beating faster, but my body is getting me ready to compete.

2.    Reframe the meaning of the event

Rather than framing exams as a threat, try to frame them as a challenge. Part of the reason they are seen as a threat is because your whole future, identity and worth appear to be at stake. This is not true. Exams are one very small part of your life that does not decide your whole future.
There are always other options, different pathways and opportunities. Vera Wang failed to get into the Olympic ice-skating team and became a world famous dress designer. Sometimes the path we imagine looks a little different.

Not all journeys are straight, and the best ones can have diversions.

3.    Accept stress and negative emotions

Some common ways people approach stress is to try to relax, ignore stress and try to reduce it. These approaches actually reinforce that stress is “bad” rather than accepting it as a natural and helpful response. These approaches also lead to poorer performance and emotional exhaustion.
Rather than ignoring the emotions, it’s better to feel them, accept them, and then try to use them to your advantage. You can say to yourself:
I feel this way because this goal is important to me, and my body is responding this way because it is getting me ready to perform.

4.    Add to your resources

Clearly, changing your mindset is only helpful if you have the resources to cope. It would be like an athlete who is about to compete but has not trained. Put time into study, study in different ways (read, write ideas in your own words, talk about the ideas, draw them) and give yourself time to practise these ideas.

When you have done this, your stress response then draws on these resources.
Stress will always be present in our lives as we take on new challenges and grow as a person. When we see low-level stress as a threat it becomes one. It becomes a red flag that we are not coping, that these feelings are wrong and we should retreat. This is not true.

However, if you are feeling severe stress and anxiety in different settings and for an extended period of time you should see your GP and get support.

Mandie Shean, Lecturer, School of Education, Edith Cowan University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Feature image Source: Pixabay
Link to article at Generation next: https://www.generationnext.com.au/2019/10/dont-calm-down-4-ways-to-harness-exam-anxiety/
Article and link reproduced with permission from Generation next. 

Did you know the school’s calendar of events (excursions and the like) are maintained as a Google Calendar which is accessible from the front page of the school’s website (see below)? Events are maintained weekly.

Extended until 31 October, the fund is open to eligible students enrolled in preschool (attached to a school) to year 12 in the ACT. For more information and the online application form, go to Financial and Resource Assistance for Families.

During Ride Safely to School Week, Transport Canberra is encouraging our school communities to walk, ride, scoot or skate to school if they are able to. It’s a great opportunity for schools to reinforce safety messages around cycling while encouraging students to choose active travel to and from school.

Learn more about the benefits of Ride Safely to School Week at Travel safely to school - Transport Canberra.