Acting Principal's Update

Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

Over the past two weeks there has been a stunning array of programs, events and activities for our students to participate in and we are proud to share these in this week’s edition of our Mordialloc College Newsletter. 

Since we last communicated with you, our students have engaged in a variety of whole school sporting events, VM Teambuilding Skills, Middle School Rock Climbing and a Senior School Art Curation Day to support VCE Art Making & Exhibiting; I hope that families managed to get engaged in some inspiring conversations when their children arrived home from these activities! 

Lunchtime clubs have commenced with great enthusiasm and our Sports and House Captains, and other student leaders are continuing to discuss how to make this year’s whole school House events the best ones yet for participation and engagement. 

Wellbeing sessions, study skills support, and other subject-based teaching & learning opportunities have also all taken place over recent weeks – carefully crafted by our sub school, teaching, and Student Services teams. A huge thanks needs to go out to our staff who will often go above and beyond to create teaching & learning opportunities that support your child’s progress at Mordialloc College.

Homework

The College believes that to promote student engagement with their learning, some homework should be set and done regularly under the coordination of the teacher. I know too well the sound of my own children telling me that they ‘have no work to do at home’ so, I hope that I can offer some ways to support you when that message makes its way to you!

The work completed at home by a student is a vital and necessary extension of the class lessons, it is an important way to consolidate and reinforce the work covered during the day.  This work is best completed as close to the lesson as possible, in quiet conditions, and as far away from the distractions of a mobile phone as you can muster. Students’ work at home is divided into two categories:

HOME STUDY students should independently follow-up on class work by creating notes, revision posters, and annotating work from the day to ensure that work is understood, and relevant facts are committed to long-term memory as a foundation for future learning, and

HOMEWORK which is a task set by the teacher.

We are always happy to engage in conversations that support improving our teaching & learning and meeting your child at their personalised point of need. Please reach out to your child’s subject teacher if you need help with supporting your child’s schoolwork.

Year 7 Information Afternoon

On Wednesday we held the Year 7 Information Afternoon in our bespoke Year 7 and Year 8 Learning Centre.  The event was so very well attended, it was a real pleasure to be able to say hello to our next tranche of Mordialloc College families. 

The session provided an opportunity for families to be introduced to the key features of the Year 7 program (structure of a typical day, communication with home group teachers and leadership team, home study, Compass, Google classroom and docs, benchmark tasks and assessment). Thanks to Jo Hannan and Andrew Potter, our Year 7 Coordinators, Simon Cummins, Assistant Principal for Middle School, and Director of Middle School, Brendan McFarland, for organising this afternoon. In addition, a number of our core Year 7 teachers and home group teachers were available to introduce themselves to parents. A copy of the presentation will be made available to all families as we understand, given the timing, not all parents/carers were able to attend. 

Communication

To segway in from the above, it is easy to see how the transition from primary school into secondary school may cause anxiety for our new families, our school is often a lot bigger than your primary school was! Whilst we put many measures in place to smooth out this process, we know that communication is the key ingredient for a successful relationship with you. 

Communication is slightly different at secondary school in that our main method of communication is via Compass. You will find the Compass App an invaluable way of quickly checking your child’s attendance, your child’s lessons for the day, and any upcoming Learning Tasks and/or Benchmark Tasks. If you need help with resetting passwords etc, please contact reception.

If I can encourage you to look at the Learning Tasks regularly, you should clearly be able to see the due date and the submission status for each learning task. Via your Compass App, you will be able to see information similar to this:

If you access Compass via your browser, you will have the option to not only see upcoming Learning Tasks, but to also see any overdue Learning Tasks.

If you click on the ‘Send email to’ you will be provided with the option to choose which of your child’s teachers to contact as regards a subject-specific concern. Please feel free to contact a classroom teacher if a Learning Task does not have the due date provided, and this is therefore stopping you from better supporting your child’s organisation.

We really want families to be aware of exactly what their child is doing in class, we know that this information can help you to feel empowered to better support your child with their progress at Mordialloc College. Using Compass to share this information with you is an evolving space for us and we are far from perfect but, we are on a journey of improvement! We have dedicated a lot of Professional Learning time to working with specialists Kristy Elliott and Kaja Strzalka so that we can evolve our pedagogical practice and further develop our curriculum; we aim to continue this great work throughout 2024 and sincerely hope that all our Mordialloc College families will quickly see the benefits of our focus on meeting our students at their personalised point of need.

Rachael Stone

Acting Principal

Mordialloc College would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land – the Bunurong/Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation, and pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. 

As a school and community, we are committed to a greater understanding and appreciation of Indigenous culture.