Student Diary . FIRST Robotics Competition With UNSW

Student Diary .FIRST RoboticsDuel Down UnderCompetition with UNSWFRC TEAM 4729Experimental Mayhem Unit(EMU’s)FIRST RoboticsFIRST Robotics is a large-scaleinternational competition whichbrings mentors and studentstogether to build a robot thatcompletes an objective andperforms in competitions againstteams worldwide. FIRST Robotics atUNSW, is to provide high schoolstudents with STEM learningopportunities in which teams workcollaboratively, learn engineeringskills, technical science and publicspeakingthroughthecommunication of ideas.Above: Cumberland Student, Naman Ganjekar, is beside the robot on the rightCompetitionDuring July 26-28, Cumberland HighSchool’s Year 11 student NamanGanjekar participated in a FIRSTrobotics competition (FRC DuelDown Under) at MacquarieUniversity in partnership withGoogle and Boeing. A small team ofstudents and mentors from UNSW(ExperimentalMayhemUnit;EMU’s, Team 4729) have beenworking on improving a robot to beready for competition over the pastmonth.REFLECTION BY NAMAN: The 3-daycompetition started off with apractice day, but parts of our robotmalfunctioned for most of the day,Cumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 2019Above: Alliance team, from left to right: team 4729, team 6476, team 7583, team 4537we worked as a group to solve thevarious problem but also with thehelp of mentors and students fromother teams. The day after, otherparts of our robot weremalfunctioning, and our groupfigured out the problems and issuesand solved them just in time for ourlast match before day 2 of thecompetition ended.On the last day, our robotmiraculously worked to its fullpotential with the help of mentorsand students working together. Weworked in an alliance with 3 otherteams to try and achieve our goal tocome first. We played throughquarter finals and made it to semifinals where we lost again the 1stseed alliance.Overall, our team came 3rd in theteam alliance out of 8 alliances and15th overall out of 30 teams.Naman GanjekarYear 11 Student

Student Diary .HSC and Careers Day ExpoAs part of Cumberland's Year 11Community Mentoring program, Iand my mentor Chrys Bekiaris tooka day out to visit the HSC andCareers Day expo in Moore Park onthe 30th of May to get an idea ofwhat's ahead after the HSC. Therewere many booths at the expo, butwe mostly looked around at themany different universities, gettingan idea of what each one offers,and how they differ. We also had alisten to a quick seminar about howATAR marks are calculated, andanother about the digital future,which was helpful considering myplans of getting into IT in the future.Overall, the day was veryinformative about future decisionsto be made and also fun in the end!Danial Amin-RahmanlouYear 11 StudentCumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 2019

Mock Trial SuccessContinues .The Cumberland Mock Trial teamwon first elimination round over StGregory’s of Campbelltown toadvance to final 32 in the state!St Gregory’s,Cumberland HS,CampbelltownCarliingfordIn an amazing sequence, our MockTrial team has won 6 contests in arow! The team won the first fourround robin trials (includingvictories over Riverside Girls andThe Kings School), followed by theirimpressive win over Wauchope, allto be topped off by the eliminationround win over a previouscompetition winner!It was a high quality and highscoring trial, in which Cumberlandwere the victors to the tune of 258to 252 over the boy’s school.Both barristers, Adwithya Puri andRachel Harkin, received a specialmention from the presidingmagistrate, Mr Chahine Chahine.He scored Taylor Barrientos 38/40possible points, which is the secondhighest score I’ve ever seen awitness receive. Harry Choi(instructing solicitor) and IlhamSaeedi (Magistrate’s Clerk) wereagain solid. Our other witness, DevChopra was his usual stoic self,although not as flamboyant asusual, which probably helped ourcase.It is hard to win the case and thetrial, especially when serving as theprosecution. But that was noproblem for this team. Theymeticulously took apart thedefence case. The magistrate foundthe defendant guilty. Then, basedCumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 2019CONGRATULATIONS Cumberland HS Mock Trial Team:Adwithya Puri, Illham Saeedi, Taylor Barrientos, Dev Chopra, Mr Thomas, HarryChoi, Rachel Harkin, and Vedant Trivedion points, he also awarded the trialto the Cumberland team!It was interesting that a member ofthe St Greg’s team message ourteam to say they would besupporting Cumberland for the restof the competition.A massive thanks to our supportpersonnel Vedant Trivedi and AlanO’Shea, (a former team memberwho returns to encourage us). Also,several students from Year 8 andYear 10 formed the audience togive the team support! Mrs Ashtonreally enjoyed watching the trialand we thank her and Ms Pikoulasand Mrs Oliveux for their ongoingsupport. A lot of teachers havetaken interest in the Mock trialteam’s performance and we thankthem for their well wishes.Our final 32 opponent is Loreto,Kirribilli, who will be a toughopponent. That trial must becompleted by August 16th. Ourteam have already started planningtheir defence in a civil trial!Mr K ThomasLegal Studies Teacher and MockTrial Coach

ACADEMIC ATTAINMENTSTUDY SKILLS TIP FOR JULY:TOP TIPS FOROVERCOMMITTED STUDENTSMaybe you are an elite athlete? Ora dedicated performer? Orsomeone who has many talentsacross lots of different areas anddon’t want to give up any of youractivities? No matter the reason,the bottom line is you are timepoor. You struggle to fit ineverything you need to do forschool, because of all of the othercommitments in your life. The badnews is there is no magic solutionthat will easily fix this issue for you.You cannot create more time. Thegood news is that there are thingsyou can do to make more efficientuse of the time you have.These tips are an abbreviatedversion of the handout available onwww.studyskillshandbook.com.au– just visit the Things To Print pageto see the full version.1. Don’t waste time in any of yourclasses at school. Make themost of every moment so youhave less to do at home andset up a buddy system in caseyou miss any lessons.2. Prune your activities and see ifthere is anything you can cutto reduce the pressure.3. Make a timetable so you canschedule in everything thatyou need to do and want to do.4. Use all little pockets of time. Ifyou are waiting before trainingthen use that time to completesome homework.Cumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 20195. Always prioritise before youstart work to ensure that themost important and urgentwork is completed first.6. If you are too tired when youget home from training it maybe better to get to bed earlyand get up a bit earlier in themorning when you are freshand do your work then.7. You may need to sacrifice anoccasional lunchtime whenyou know you will be too busythat night.8. Let go of perfectionism it maynot be possible to doeverything as fully as youwould like. Take smartshortcuts when you can.9. Use any big blocks of time totackle the time-consumingtasks that you haven’t hadtime for.10. Some work like study notes,assessments or major worksmay be able to be left to theholidays.STUDY SKILLS HANDBOOKOur school’s subscription details andhsPassword:183successRemember to be kind to yourself. Itis difficult to have enough time toexcel in every aspect of your life! Allyou can do is make good choiceswith the time you have and makethe most of that time and still tryand get the best results you cangiven the time constraints you areworking under.Mr K ThomasHT portfolio: AcademicAttainment

Year 9 Design andTechnologyStudents spent this semesterlearning about designers and thedesign process. Their first projectinvolveddesigningandconstructing a letter rack inspiredby the Bauhaus movement. TheBauhaus is recognised as being oneof the most significant influenceson the development of architectureand industrial design during the 20thCentury, bringing together massproduction and the innovative useof materials fashioning glass, steeland concrete into simple geometricshapes. Students focused on keyaspects including strong geometricshapes and the use of primarycolourstoproducetheirfreestanding acrylic letter holders.Year 10 IndustrialTechnology – TimberStudents have been learning abouta variety of manufactured boards,hardware and joining techniques,building on their foundationalknowledge from last year. Theywere challenged to design andconstruct a desk tidy thatincorporated solid timber andmanufactured board, hardware anda minimum of two different joiningtechniques. Students created awide range of projects showcasingtheir skills and abilities, with someextending themselves by buildingdrawers as part of their designs.Ms K NowakowskiTeacher, Yr 9 D&T, Yr 10 IT-TimberCumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 2019

Library NewsIt is wonderful to look over ourstudent borrowing statistics andcontinually see an increase instudent borrowing. I would like toencourage our students to bringthe books back as soon as they havefinished or stopped reading thebook as there are often otherstudents waiting to read aparticular book. Students mayreserve items that are out bylogging onto the Oliver librarywebsite via the DOE Student Portal.Towards the end of last term, a1000 piece Harry potter Jigsawpuzzle was placed on a library tablefor our school community tocomplete. Many students andteachers have enjoyed thechallenge of finding just the rightpiece to almost complete thepuzzle.To interest students, this month wehave put together a display of “LoveStory” books. We are givingstudents the opportunity to choosethe rest of our displays for the year.Simply scan the QR code to open upa Google survey with the optionsfor our future display categories.During Week 2, some of our olderstudents were running shortlunchtime seminars in the libraryfor our year 7 and 8 students. Theyounger students greatly benefitfrom the guidance of our olderstudents.We have recently purchased someamazing new Young Adult Fictiontitles to engage our students. Overthe holidays, I greatly enjoyedreading the young Adult version of“The Tattooist of Auschwitz” byHeather Morris and “Enchantee” byGita Trelease.Topics included:Happy reading from Study Skills How to use Microsoft Excel Creating basic charts andgraphs in Excel Getting organisedschool successforCumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 2019Mrs K AlexanderTeacher Librarian

Library NewsSome of the NEW books now available to borrow from the library Year 7-9 students There are less than 4 weeks to logyour reading for the PremiersReading challenge - which closes onthe 30th of August.Challenge yourself to schedulesome time in your diary to read andsubmit your titles on the PRCwebsite.Cumberland High School NewsletterIssue 6 – 02 August 2019