‘HEYWIRE’ SUCCESS
The Federal Minister for Agriculture Tony Bourke made the official announcement of the ABC Local Radio 2009 Heywire winners last week and Bingara Central School Year 11 student Kristen Heal was among them.
Mr Bourke congratulated the winners for their honesty, creativity and sheer passion in bringing their stories to national attention. The competition requires young people to tell stories about their life in rural Australia and Kristen wrote about her experiences living on the family farm.
It is a great achievement to be recognised in a national competition like this and we all congratulate Kristen on her success and thank English Head Teacher Miss Di Gallagher for her encouragement of Kristen to enter.
If you would like to read Kristen’s work and other stories from across Australia then they are published on the ABC web site at:
www.abc.net.au/local/specialsites
Click on the ‘Heywire’ link then click on ‘Heywire 2009 Winners Announced’. Under NSW click Kristen Heal or click the link over Bingara on the map of Australia.
Kristen’s success does not end with her writing either. Kristen’s efforts in Mathematics are of a similar high standard. Mr McGowan has Yr 11 maths students take the same maths assessment tasks as Oxley High students in Tamworth. When all the results were compared for the Preliminary course Kristen ranked first. Mitch Anderson was 10th, Michael Andrews was 26th and Jade Dixon 28th. All these students were in the top 25% of the Oxley year group. Well done to them all.
‘FROG DREAMING’ CONFERENCE
On Thursday and Friday last week Bec Smith, Education Officer from National Parks in Armidale convened a two day conference at ‘The Roxy’ for Primary students from across the north-west. Year 5 and 6 students from Bingara Central School and mentors from Years 7, 8 and 9 participated in the two days of fun and learning.
The aim of the conference was to educate and empower the youth of today about current and relevant environmental issues in a fun and interactive way. Workshops over the two days focused on environmental and land use issues and Aboriginal heritage in the student’s local areas.
Each school gave a presentation and Bingara students focused on the impact of camping on the Gwydir River. The students learned Aboriginal dances, enjoyed a field trip to the Myall Creek Memorial site and made parrot and sugar glider nesting boxes to be placed in trees around the school. The students have come away from the workshops much better informed about local issues and are planning to take further action to address their concerns.
A big thank you to teachers Brooke Marshall, Fiona Craddock and Paul Alliston for their support and encouragement.
Mark Vale
Principal
