Getting to know our students and setting up for success
by Ms Shareen Bottrell, Assistant Principal

Getting to know our students and setting up for success
by Ms Shareen Bottrell, Assistant Principal
Teachers have spent many hours in meetings this term discussing student data and analysing what they know about each learner’s point of need.
Our three areas of focus this term have been:
1. Getting to know each student through investigating data.
2. Creating a positive climate in each classroom that enables learning.
A classroom where students feel safe, respected and ready to learn does not happen by accident. Teachers have intentionally built a culture and routines in each class that enable learning. This includes establishing clear expectations, building genuine relationships and creating environments where students feel comfortable taking risks with their learning.
3. We have been exploring ways to explicitly teach self-regulated learning in order to strengthen students’ learner behaviours and support them to take greater ownership of their learning.
At Box Hill High School, our key Learner Behaviours are:
Active Participation – Students are actively engaged in their learning rather than passive recipients of instruction. They ask questions, contribute to discussions, and take ownership of their work.
Growth Mindset – Students demonstrate a willingness to embrace challenge, persist through difficulty, and view effort as a pathway to improvement.
Self-Regulation – Students develop the ability to monitor their understanding, manage their responses to challenges, and apply strategies to stay on track. This is explicitly taught and developed over time, not assumed.
This work will continue to be a focus over the coming years as we embed consistent, explicit approaches across the school.
Students learn best when they feel known and supported, when the classroom climate is positive, and when they have the learner behaviours needed to regulate their own learning.