Each Thursday night all the clean washing is returned and the boys make their beds – they love it and always say how much they miss doing the same thing at home.

Congratulation to the following boys who received awards for their strong performance in the recent Australian Science Competition:

Zac Hallinan

Matthew Jarjoura

Nicholas Kochanowicz

Cameron O’Sullivan

Jon Ryan

Joe Carrigan

Will Coffey

Adrian Dawson

Lochlann Giles

Joe McCauley

Brendan Quirk

Last Tuesday the boys spent the day at St Joseph’s Baulkham Hills. Fr Gavin started with a Mass for the boys then a Joeys Old Boy, James Cummins, spoke to the boys. They then broke into different groups to rotate through 4 different activities.

Today during Period 2 Shannai Pearce from the Black Dog Institute came and spoke to the boys about mental fitness. It relates to the “Biteback Challenge” that the boys have been doing during Pastoral groups for the last few weeks.

Shannai gave the boys some easy to use tips which research has proven helps mental fitness. Tonight in the dorms we will be using one of her tips: think about 3 things which you were grateful for during the day.

Brendan Quirk – Y9, Cameron Horne – Y9, George Johnson – Y10, Daniel Gibbons – Y10 with Paul McDonald from the Children’s Bookshop.

Four of our talented readers from Year 9 and 10 did a fantastic job participating in the Santa Sabina Youth Review Forum, along with students from Santa Sabina, St Patrick’s College, Strathfield and Meriden College. The forum members, George Johnson, Daniel Gibbons, Brendan Quirk and Cameron Horne, were asked to read four of the six books shortlisted by The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) for the 2017 Book Awards in the Older Readers Category and then discuss their responses to the novels with other students, in front of an audience of around 150 Year 10 Santa Sabina students. A special mention to Cameron Horne who was the only panel member to read all six of the shortlisted books.

The nominations for Book of the year 2017 were, One Would Think the Deep by Claire Zorn, The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon, Waer by Meg Caddy, Yellow by Megan Jacobson, Frankie by Shivaun Plozza and Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley. It is a somewhat controversial selection of novels, with all but one dealing with social realism and four of the six written by debut authors.

The students on the panel, as well as the Year 10 Santa Sabina audience concluded that Words in Deep Blue was the book which most appealed to them, with The Bone Sparrow coming a close second. Their choice was not endorsed by the CBCA who awarded Book of the Year for Older Readers to Words in Deep Blue by Clair Zorn at the CBCA awards. While this was not the panel’s top pick, it was a book most of the panel members very much enjoyed reading.

This is a wonderful opportunity for teenagers from a range of schools to come together an openly discuss a range of books.