On Wednesday 24 May at exactly 11.00am our Junior School students joined millions of other children across the country for the annual National Simultaneous Storytime.
Each year a picture book, written and illustrated by an Australian author and illustrator, is read simultaneously in schools and libraries across Australia. Now in its 23rd year, it is a colourful, vibrant, fun event that aims to promote the value of reading and literacy.
This year’s book was The Speedy Sloth, by Rebecca Young and Heath McKenzie and was read by our Head of Junior School, Ms Rebecca Collie. To make it even more fun we chose two winners from each year level at random to win a copy of the book and a baby sloth fluffy toy.
If your child missed out or wants to relive the fun, click here to watch the video. Congratulations to the lucky winners!
We refer to a student's achievement that was unintentionally omitted from material provided to The Somersetonian 2022. We apologise that Kevin Wang (Class of 2022), was not recognised as the co-recipient of the Mathematics Award in the Scholars’ Day Awards Senior School article on Page 232 of The Somersetonian 2022.
The Mathematics Award is awarded to the student in the Senior Class with the best combined results in Mathematical Methods and Specialist Mathematics (QCE) and/or IB Mathematics Hl and Further Mathematics. This was awarded to Kevin along with Charlie Liu. We celebrate Kevin's achievement and apologise for the omission.
Collaborative Mural – Oil pastels and watercolour
Pre-Prep Students in collaboration with Lann Levinge (Kombumerri traditional owner, Yugambeh language region)
Lann visited us to share his knowledge of the Kombumerri people and their Dreamtime Stories. Each class was told a different story. We discussed the importance of LISTENING to our elders’ stories to learn about our past, and our culture.
Each class then chose symbols to retell the story Lann had shared with them. The children drew these symbols using oil pastels on their respective section of the mural and added watercolour over the top. Colours were selected in collaboration with the children. We asked ourselves: Which colours would be best to represent the different parts of our story? Yellow for the honey, Blue for the water, etc.
At the centre of our mural, there is a meeting place with people of different sizes around it, just like at school. Then a songline travels across all stories, joining them. From the songline, paths lead to the meeting place: water paths for stories where water plays an important part (Gwondo, Jabreen and Jalum) and a land path when the story takes place on land (Wugan).
See next week's episode of Somerset Stream to watch the making of our collaborative mural.
Have you ever heard of UQ Engineering Ambassadors at Somerset College? Well, we are the first wave of UQ Engineering, Design and Computing Ambassadors, and our goal is to promote these subject areas throughout the College across the course of 2023.
The University of Queensland's Ambassador Program has been specifically designed for Year 11 students who are passionate and motivated in the fields of Design and Engineering. The Program aims to deepen knowledge and raise the profile of these subject areas across the schools involved and to simply engage and inspire young people in the limitless potential of STEM + Design.
Being an Ambassador will challenge us to develop our leadership abilities and communication skills, offering us the chance to communicate with like-minded students across Queensland and Northern NSW. As Ambassadors, we will bring events, activities and opportunities to your attention at least once a term.
Please keep an eye out across all of the Colleges social platforms and engage with events and activities that spark your interest!
Featured (from left to right) Elliott Bartley, Ekheera Birk, Shania Li and Oscar Pan
Year 11 and 12 students recently attended the Future Filmmakers conference at Bond University, as part of the Gold Coast Film Festival.
The conference was focused on studying film after high school and working in the film industry. We are extremely excited by the Queensland Film industry and how much it has grown since COVID. The industry is booming and many people are migrating towards working within it.
A few highlights of the conference were Gold Coast Film Festival ambassador, actor Lincoln Lewis. Lincoln spoke of his experience as an actor within the industry, but also some other areas of interest such as producing. He was enthusiastic and engaged with the audience. Lots of questions were asked and answered and Lincoln even obliged for a few photographs for fans.
Keynote speakers included, makeup and props special effects artist, Jason Baird. Jason has just won a BAFTA for his work on Baz Luhrmann’s Queensland created film biopic, Elvis. Victoria Heatherington, who is a Bond Alumnus 2018, spoke to students via a zoom link from her workplace in Adelaide. She is now working for WETA FX. Victoria has been involved in recent films, The Batman, The Last of Us and DC and Marvels films are currently in the works.
Students were given the opportunity to take a tour around the Bond Film studios, visiting the sound and editing suites and the main film studio. Many of our students are excited to enter the BUFTA Awards, Bond University's film competition for Australian Year 11 and 12 students.
Future Filmmakers is an annual event held during the Gold Coast Film Festival at Bond university. Somerset College’s Design Department is proud to work in partnership with Bond University’s Film school.
The Gold Coast Secondary Inter-School Chess tournament had a record 297 entrants for local high school teams playing in five different divisions. Somerset sent a large contingent to the event, although we were missing our whole top team due to assessment clashes.
Somerset nonetheless qualified two teams to the Premier Division next two, from where the chance to qualify for the State Finals will occur.
On the day, our best individual performers were Malcolm Chan who scored 5/7 in A Grade and Jackson Yeung who scored 6/7 in B Grade (second place).
For teams, our Somerset 3 team of Malcolm Chan, Roger Hua, Bobby Long and Ethan Huang finished = second.
The Primary Inter-School event saw 287 players take part, with Somerset sending several players.
In the A grade, Somerset 1 (Alessandro Martinese, Harrison Qu, Paul Sang Yum and Sanaaya Mapabandara) finished in second place.
In the B grade, Alisa Lai finished in first place with 6/7. Taya Liu finished sixth with 5/7 including the last game of the tournament in a big comeback win.
In the C grade, Sam Gilshenan and William Lai finished = second with 6/7, Somerset 10 (Sam Gilshenan, Oscar Riddle, Evan Li, Liam Hunt) were second, whilst Somerset 8 (William Lai, Amelia Shum, Isabella Jennings, Ada Yang) finished third.
In D grade, Samuel Dawson, Tiao Thou, Dylan Kingston all scored 5/7, whilst Somerset 15 (Tias Thou, Edmund Lee, Harrison Cordner, Ava Barry) finished third.
Somerset Tennis Spartans recently had the opportunity to compete at the Queensland Secondary Schools State Tennis Trials. With 24 players across three divisions – Open Boys, Junior Boys and Junior Girls – the team had a strong showing and brought home some impressive results.
Open Boys division saw the team perform well despite having a few players out. The Open boys managed to find some form towards the end of the day, earning themselves fourth place in what was a fiery and tough division. A great way for our senior students to end their tennis journey at the college.
The Junior Boys division was even more impressive with Somerset fielding the most teams in division, with the A team placing third, narrowly losing to The Southport School in the semi-finals. Special mention goes to Orion Burdett, who not only faced some of the best players in the region for his age, but for also leading the team to this great result. Our B and C teams also performed exceptionally well, placing fifth and sixth respectively.
The team’s performance in the Junior Girls division was equally as strong, having lost to PBC in the final to come home with a strong second place. Our best result so far in this division, so the girls should be exceptionally proud of themselves!
The Colleges’ strong performance was thanks to the hard work and dedication of all the players and coaches on the day and throughout the weeks leading up to this event.
Overall, Somerset College’s performance at the Queensland Secondary Schools State Tennis Trials was a major success and all players should be proud of their efforts. We look forward to next year improving upon these results!
Students who played on the day:
In this week’s episode of Spartan Stream, we celebrate the close of APS Sport, Season 1, enjoy victories in Volleyball and Netball, highlight Spartan success in trap shooting, Football and Chess and we finish with our runners, after the All Schools Cross Country.
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