From the PDHPE classroom to history, science and beyond, teachers at Queenwood School are working to raise the bar in discipline-specific writing skills – and an instructional framework is paving the way.
With Junior School Parent/Teacher meetings this week, School Reports have been a regular topic of conversation within and among our families. School Reports are received by parents with mixed feelings – delight and pride if their daughter is performing well and concern if their progress is not as expected.
Often when discussing a daughter’s education and experiences at school, parents will indicate that their daughter’s happiness is high on their list of priorities.
In the course of this week, there has been much talk about leadership and this prompted one of the senior girls to ask me what lessons I’ve learnt about it.
Queenwood is a school that was founded in 1925 on enlightened women’s aspirations for the leadership and education of girls and young women. It is with this heritage in mind that I write on behalf of the Council to announce that our Principal, Ms Elizabeth Stone, has been appointed as the next Head of Winchester College in the UK.
We made it to the end of term but the girls are tired! We are also seeing high levels of illness at the moment – more from influenza than from COVID-19 – and this underlines the need for some proper rest in the upcoming holidays.
In Canberra recently, the Year 6 students learnt how to vote, ‘wrote’ new Bills, debated contemporary issues in the ‘Senate’, engaged in role-play as Members of Parliament and Government Officials, investigated the extraordinary lives of scientists, artists, architects, and heroes of war and interacted with each other and people they had not previously met – with utmost confidence that they were equipped to participate in these activities. They were, without doubt, demonstrating agency.
Australia is blessed with universal access to schooling and, earlier this year, we were reminded how lucky our daughters are. Staff heard a moving account from a parent whose family were forced to flee from the Taliban, and whose wife and daughters had to hide in the house basement secretly studying until they were able to leave Afghanistan.
You may have noticed that we’ve started introducing each of our 12 QPA Committee members and their roles, in the last few newsletters. This is not to flatter their ego or to satisfy a need for recognition – albeit it is always nice to be recognised for a job well done, especially when delivered by a team of enthusiast volunteers – no, this is so parents can reach out to them to give feedback, make suggestions, or simply offer your help. The purpose is also for you to understand what the committee does and what role each volunteer plays in creating an enjoyable journey for the girls and their parents during their years at Queenwood.
When we were in Year 7, the Head and Vice Head Prefects seemed to be an image of perfection, exemplifying Queenwood’s values of truth, service, and courage, and embodying everything we wanted to be. If we thought about it at all, we would have assumed that the path to those positions had been filled only with achievements and successes. Now that we hold the roles ourselves, however, we know how far this assumption is from the truth. We are all too conscious of the countless failures, disappointments, hat detentions, and nights filled with tears which we have both experienced in our time at Queenwood.
Like many of her friends, Year 10 student Penny Jin used to love reading when she was in primary school. But a busy schedule and change in priorities meant her love of books slowly waned. That changed over the past two years after her school, Queenwood School for Girls in Mosman, introduced a mandatory 20 minutes of reading for all 900 students at the same time every day, regardless of what class they were in.