Day Structure
Our timetable structure is designed to cultivate a holistic and engaging educational experience that prioritises both academic excellence and personal growth. Engage sessions each morning, organised by houses, foster a sense of community and continuity, allowing students to build meaningful relationships with peers across different year levels and with their dedicated adult mentors. Our Evolve programme on Monday mornings is designed to start the week with a focus on individual growth. It encompasses social skills, practical life education, and values that are crucial for personal and professional success. Enhance on Wednesday afternoons offers students the opportunity to explore and develop new passions through a range of activities. This enrichment programme is driven by student interests and staff passion, ensuring that each session is both engaging and meaningful.
This thoughtfully structured timetable supports our commitment to helping students soar to success by blending rigorous academic pursuits with essential life skills and community engagement.
Engage: Homeroom and Houses
Engage is a house-based homeroom made up of students from each year level. The small group meets each morning for our young people to reflect on the previous day and prepare for the day ahead. Students remain in the same homeroom and retain the same adult mentor for as long as possible throughout their high school journey.
Engage fosters collaboration and communication between students of all ages, leveraging our small-school spirit, mitigating social pressures, better preparing them for future workplaces and social situations, and ultimately developing empathy in our young people.
The programme's primary objectives are:
- To provide students with a safe and welcoming space that is separate from classroom learning;
- To facilitate communications between home and the school through a central point of connection;
- To promote a sense of belonging and school spirit through emphasis on school houses;
- To enable respite from the peer pressure that naturally occurs amongst young people of the same age group;
- To provide students with an adult mentor who is detached from classroom obligations;
- To level the playing field and eliminate inherent inequalities between age groups;
- To break the barrier of knowing only what we have experienced, exposing junior students to a realistic calibration of their own development;
- To cultivate confidence, maturity, responsibility and independence through the values of respect, responsibility, and resilience.
The 10-minute session includes roll marking, school communications through daily notices, individual planning and organisation using Microsoft Teams and Outlook, policy compliance, and student-led activities. While teachers serve as adult mentors to facilitate procedures, senior students are appointed as homeroom leaders and are responsible for modelling the standards and expectations of personal behaviour and presentation.
There are six homerooms from each of our two houses, Warriors and Spartans. The first enrolled member of a new Longreach SHS family is assigned a new house membership, and future enrolled family members retain enduring membership.
Evolve: Individual Growth Programme
Evolve is our personal growth programme that focuses on social skills, practical life education, and the values and expectations of school and the workplace. The weekly session starts the week on a Monday morning and includes scheduled year-level meetings, full-school assemblies, multi-age school activities, and age-based care programmes.
Through a range of internally and externally delivered learning experiences, our young people are supported to:
- Form rich relationships with the people in their lives, including family, friends, teachers, employers and community members
- Develop a repertoire of positive, proactive language, and make honest choices for themselves that assess their long-term behavioural impacts
- Understand the legal, regulatory and ethical frameworks within which human beings make decisions for themselves and others
- Appraise information and sources to be able to make informed life choices
- Engage in a diverse range of activities that promote and value responsibility, respect, and resilience.
Throughout the year, initiatives of the Evolve programme may extend to full- or half-day activities delivered by external providers such as Queensland Health, Anglicare, RACQ, True Relationships & Reproductive Health, Life Education, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, Queensland Ambulance Service, and Queensland Police Service.