Congratulations to our Scholarship winners for 2018. Eleven girls were awarded fourteen Scholarships in total.

We were delighted to have some of the girls back on Wednesday to speak with Year 13 followed by morning tea with the staff. Scholarship is a very prestigious academic award and all of the girls who entered the exams gained excellent higher order learning in their subjects. We will be encouraging students to enter these examinations again this year and sharing strategies in this newsletter during the year to get younger students developing this higher order thinking and extending themselves in their passion subjects.

Our Scholarship winners are:

Mia Johnson - English

Lucy Pollock - Japanese, Music

Carina Donegan - Biology

Lucy Matehaere - Biology, Chemistry, Statistics

Madeleine Reid - Biology

Rebecca Walker - Biology

Louise Lin  - Physics

Hannah George - Photography

Alaina Baker - Geography

Meredith Walker - History

Ilana Goossens - Health & PE

We have this information from departments that have been able to share some of the students scholarship work:

Lucy Pollock

Congratulations to Lucy Pollock who gained a New Zealand Scholarship in Music last year. For scholarship Lucy was required to submit a 14 minute piano recital, a critical written refection of her performance and pass successfully a three hour external Music theory analysis examination. For your listening pleasure is here is Lucy's scholarship recital.

Hannah George

Attached is Hannah's scholarship photography pages. Please note these have been scanned off a colour copy.

Ilana Goossens

Ilana gained top scholarship grades in year 13 Physical Education in 2018. Here are some interesting segments from her excellent essay

Nature Vs Nurture or Nature and Nurture?

...During the later years, parental involvement decreased as the performer took greater control of the decision-making process with regards to their future career. Yet, parents continued to provide support in a background role, as providers of not only financial support but also emotional support.” According to Sloane, it was extremely important that parents provided a "nurturant, understanding environment for their child to retreat to, if necessary" (Sloane, 1985, p. 470) . The research completed by Bloom shows the critical role of parents in supporting their child through the demands of deliberate practice required to become experts in their areas of performance. This leads me to believe that if the child has the required support to deal with the stress of deliberate practice, they will be more likely to continue the sport, and remain committed to it.

...This athlete would have to enjoy this sport, as with enjoyment comes commitment, with commitment comes more training hours, which result in a higher chance of success. This leads to the effectiveness of training as the athlete must train with purpose, with the 10,000-hour rule as a guideline. They must have access to the right resources such as training, facilities, and coaching, and must have emotional support from someone to fall back on when there is a high amount of pressure or stress on them... It is clear that this is no longer a debate of nature vs nurture, but nature and nurture…. if athletes are serious about becoming elite, we need to surround them with more of the right facilities, coaching, media coverage, emotional support, and financial support to ensure they have every available opportunity to achieve their dream.