Assistant Principals' Report
Simon Jones
Assistant Principal
Years 10 - 12
All students in the senior school are now in the last weeks of semester 1 courses and need to continue to work steadily to achieve their best and enjoy success in their chosen studies, whether they be in year 10, 11 or 12. Recent progress reports and semester 1 parent-teacher interviews should ensure that students and parents are very clear about student progress and what may need to be done to address concerns. Teachers can always be contacted via Compass or email for further updates if required.
Year 12 VCE students and Year 11’s doing a Year 12 VCE subject will undertake the General Achievement Test (GAT) on the 13th of June between 10am and 1.15pm. They will be doing preparation and familiarisation activities at school in readiness. The GAT does not contribute to a student’s VCE or ATAR directly, but is an important mechanism for checking school-based assessment results, externally assessed exam results and in providing Derived Exam Scores in the event that students are unable to sit the final exams due to illness, for example. There are no other externally assessed mid-year exams for year 12’s, however there will again be practice exams for all VCE students. The importance of these practice exams cannot be overstated as authentic exam practice where students are required to work under timed conditions is the best possible preparation for the final VCAA exams at the end of the year. We have clearly conveyed the message to students that end of year exams will be the factor that has by far the greatest bearing on their study scores and hence their ATAR. As such students need to take every opportunity to maximize their exam performance and taking practice exams seriously is a vital step in this direction.
The Year 10, 11 and 12 exam timetable and exam expectations are attached in this newsletter for the information of parents.
I would also like to congratulate the Year 11 students who were involved in the Presentation Ball earlier this month. It was exciting to see all of their hard work and practice come to fruition on the night and all of the debutantes looked amazing in their finery. A memorable night was had by all who were in attendance.
Andrew Wynne Assistant Principal
Years 7-9.
Already we are into week six of the second term! The year is flying past and already so many experiences and events have taken place, and so much more to come! Dromana College is indeed an exciting and dynamic place to work and study.
Camps
Term One finished with the Year 7 camp, and I was delighted to spend a day with the students. I walked with a group to Smiths Beach where the students tried their hand at surfing, then spent a couple of sessions with canoeing and raft making groups. This visit is always one of the highlights of the Year and the camp is always well organised and a great opportunity for students to develop relationships with their teachers and classmates. It is an important aspect of the college pastoral program and provides a springboard for embracing all that the college offers in the years ahead. The Year 7 students on this camp were indeed a credit to the school and themselves, embracing all activities with enthusiasm and mutual respect. Well done to all the Year 7 team. The Year 8 students also attended their pastoral camp at Licola. This camp presents students with challenges outside the classroom environment, and further strengthens relationships between students and teachers. Congratulations to all involved.
Naplan
Naplan testing is an important event on the school calendar, and this year again our students were tested in Literacy and Numeracy, as were all Year 7 and Year 9 students across the country. These tests were held in exam like conditions and I was extremely impressed with the attitude in which these students approached this process. Whether we like it or not, testing is an important element of assessment that students need to become familiar with, particularly as they approach the senior levels of schooling. Well done to all the Year 7and Year 9 students and the co-ordinators for making the process meaningful and professional.
Chad Ambrose
Assistant Principal
Learning and Teaching
All students in Year 7 and 9 recently completed NAPLAN tests, which cover, language conventions, writing, reading and numeracy. In the wider public NAPLAN is debated vigorously, but it is important to note that a lot of the debate is around how NAPLAN is used. Here at Dromana College we have a simple philosophy when it comes to NAPLAN… we just want every student to do their Personal Best. When students try their best it allows us, as a school, to track how much improvement students have made from Year 7 to Year 9. This information can then be used to update and improve existing programs or can be used to make decisions about where to allocate future resources. An example of this are the improvements recently made to our Year 9 Maths program, which has seen additional staffing support provided to every single Year 9 Maths class.
Our approach to NAPLAN at Year 7 and at Year 9 also differs widely. At Year 7 level we opt for a soft approach to NAPLAN to help students feel safe and supported, in a more formal test setting. We stress to all Year 7s not to worry about NAPLAN, just do your Personal Best.
At Year 9 there is greater emphasis on NAPLAN for a number of reasons. Firstly, in Year 10-12 students are required to sit formal assessments and exams and in Year 12 VCE students will most likely sit formal exams for every single one of their subjects and in excess of twenty formal, in class, assessments across the year. NAPLAN is our first opportunity to work with students to teach them how to approach these type of assessments, a process that in coming years will grow to include how to effectively study for exams as well as how to approach the formal sitting of exams. Through this process we are also able to identify students who are anxious and provide them with support. There is no doubt that our students continually achieve outstanding VCE / VCAL results because, in part, they have gained confidence in their ability to perform under exam conditions, a process that really kicks off with NAPLAN in Year 9. Secondly, we are able to track student results against Year 7 results and measure learning growth or improvement. We do not rank student performance in NAPLAN, frankly we have little interest in how well students have performed. What we are interested in is how much they have improved. The Year 9s this year know that this is our focus and watching them undertake the tests left us in no doubt that our Year 9 students approached the tests confident in the knowledge that, if they did their Personal Best, they would show excellent learning growth and improvement. The third reason we focus more intently on NAPLAN in Year 9 is that it allows us to check against all of our other information and assessments to ensure that we are meeting the individual learning needs of our students. Teachers match up the information from NAPLAN with their own assessments and their knowledge of students (gained from working with them in class) and use all of this information to make changes to what we teach, how we teach and the feedback we provide to students, all in the quest to further support student learning.