Assistant Principal  -Curriculum

Dear O’Connor community,

Well, here we are!  Term 2 already.  This week, I’ve been reflecting on our beautiful school in this autumn season.  It sure is a pleasant experience to drive in here each morning and see how the trees have changed.  Yesterday I walked around the school, taking a few photos.

Student Led Conferences - Subject Based

As I write this article, I’m sitting in room U11, observing our student-led conferences.  Students in Years 7 to 10 have come in with their parents/guardians and met with their subject teachers and discussed their learning.  By the time this newsletter is published, three nights of these conferences would have concluded: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after school.  I’d like to thank everyone for coming in and meeting with their teachers.  I would also like to thank the teachers for working through three really long days, in most cases until after 6 pm.  This is the first time we have had Yr 7, 8, 9 and 10 conferences together over three days.  I can see as an admin on Compass that 855 bookings took place.  Each of these averaged 7 minutes, so that’s 5985 minutes.  Or around 100 hours.  That’s a lot of talking!  All of it was focussed on moving learning forward and building connections.  This was the focus of my last article in the newsletter, so it’s nice to see it in action.

Subject-Based Student Led Conferences this week

The New Building

I’m feeling really blessed today to have seen inside the new building at our great school.  It’s really taking shape with the exterior finished and the interior being fitted out.  It’s already looking magnificent and it will be a real asset to our learning environments.  The best way to describe it is to say it’s a multi purpose gym and performing arts centre.  But it’s hard to put into words or pictures how big and plentiful the spaces are!  There are classrooms everywhere with sliding stacker doors that can be opened up or closed to fit the needs of different activities.  The performance centre with retractable tiered seating and huge gym are both incredible.  There’s also a basement level full of rooms underneath.  Just a few months to go now…….

Looking from the performing arts centre to the gym.  A huge open space!

The Gym

The doors into the PDHPE space

Co-Teaching

As you may be aware, we have organised the timetable this year so there are always two classes of the same year (Yr 7 to Yr 10) for the same subject on at the same time.  Sounds confusing?  It just means that two teachers can co-plan, co-teach (in some cases) and co-reflect.  If one teacher is away, the partner teacher can help the replacement teacher keep the learning consistent. We have taken this to the next level with Year 7 by putting these two classes in the same room.  Rooms L11 and L12 have been used all year for core class 1 and 2.  You can see Mrs Mitheu in action with casual teacher Mrs Kimmorley walking the room in the photo below.

7 Class 1 and 7 Class 2 in Rooms L11 and L12 - Co-teaching in action

7 Class 3 and 7 Class 4 together in room AG3

This term, we have moved 7 Class 3 and 7 Class 4 into room AG3.  This is for English, Religion, HSIE, Maths and PDHPE theory. This has been a big change for both the students and the teachers with some challenges to overcome.  I’d like to thank them all for working hard to improve the learning in this new space.

In conclusion, I’d like to reiterate something I have said in other articles.  That is, how proud I am of O’Connor Catholic College!  Every day I thank my lucky stars that I am able to work as a leader in this great school.  

Mr Stephen Chapman

Assistant Principal - Curriculum

Never stop learning; for when we stop learning, we stop growing  - Jack Lewman