Greetings from St Bede’s College.

We had our annual Academic Assembly yesterday, acknowledging the achievements in NCEA last year.

We had much to celebrate. Following on from the excellent results in 2017, the best since NCEA began, 2018 results were also very impressive, and an endorsement of an excellent combination of staff and students working together; staff who are committed to doing the best for their students, but also students responding in kind, which is one of the most important dynamics in any learning institution.

|At assembly we dwelt on one aspect of the results - namely the impressive number of boys who gained merit or excellence. That tells us that the boys are being extended to achieve at, or somewhere near their best, rather than settling on merely achieving results.

Students were recognised in three ways:

• Students who gained a Merit endorsement received a Merit Badge
• Those who gained an Excellence received an Academic Pocket
• Excellence students who gained over 100 credits at Level 1 and 80 credits at Level 2 were presented with the Gold Academic Pocket. (see the photos below)

Part of my Assembly message follows:

"Our teachers are well aware that to achieve either merit or excellence requires good reading and comprehension skills and on many occasions good written skills to show that understanding of whatever subject. What I am saying, those skills require practice. As with anything in life - to improve your reading you need to read! To comprehend what you read, you need to concentrate, but here is where the teacher helps – to aid comprehension they help with aspects like the vocab of that subject. You help yourself by asking good questions in that learning process, seeking and receiving feedback to improve your understanding. The term is collaborative learning and that is not only with your teacher, but with each other. Research tells us that an important part of learning is the dialogue between students as well as teacher instruction. Teachers may give you the content, but that is only part of the learning – interpreting knowledge and applying that, is also an important part of learning.

To emphasise the importance of reading and writing, I want to acknowledge the publication of a poem by a Y9 student, Noah Cunningham, that he wrote last year, and is now published in a journal for young writers and artists, called ToiToi.

As you will see the context of the poem is one close to the hearts of New Zealanders, namely Gallipoli and the beginning of ANZAC".

I have included the poem below.

Until next week.

Justin Boyle

Gallipoli

At the Museum of New Zealand,
Te Papa Tongarewa,
Jack's statue appears like a giant.
His sleeves, rolled up.
His arms bear the scars of war.
Mud soaks his uniform,
a memory of the trenches.
At Quinn's Post,
it's evening, close to sunset.
Around him, the dead wait to be buried
like ants await their live brothers
to carry them away.
It's dinner time.
Jack perches on a wooden tea chest,
eating a crust of bread.
Flies pester him for crumbs,
spreading their disease.
The night will be broken again and again,
by the rumble of heavy artillery,
the nightmares of his comrades.
Sleep overcomes his weakened body.
At the court martial,
the death sentence echoes through his mind.
He remembers life back home.
A journalist, an athlete.
Long Wairarapa summers.
Golden fields stretching for miles.
His sentence is rescinded,
but death still comes for Jack
at Chunuk Bair.

(Poem by Noah Cunningham)