From the Senior School Assistant Principal 

Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences

In Week 7 & 8 parents and students will have the opportunity to meet teachers in WebEx conferences. Due to the positive feedback from our community, we are continuing with the online conference structure.We encourage parents and students to avail themselves of this important opportunity to meet our teachers to discuss student progress. Students are expected to attend interviews with families and teachers. They too will benefit from the feedback provided and from the opportunity to share their own reflections on their learning.

Conference bookings can be found on the Community Tab on your Compass homepage. Please note the following times and monitor Compass for information about how to book your conferences. 

Week 8: 

• Thursday 14th March: 12:00pm – 7:30pm (no classes) 

Week 9:

• Wednesday 20th March: 2:30pm – 4:30pm (students will be dismissed at 1:15pm)

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child’s progress. 

Our Senior School community

There have been 1744 times that Senior School students have been recognised for displaying our DARE values in classes and our community in the first half of Term 1. It is incredible to hear from your teachers that you have been working productively in class, completing your Snapshot tasks on time, contributing to class discussions, asking your teacher questions, supporting Tutor Group development, supporting peers in your class, being on time to Tutor Group in full school uniform and completing homework to a high level.

Feedback is an integral mechanism to support reflection and growth. Senior School students have started to receive academic feedback on their CATs and SACs, supporting them to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement. These past two weeks students have begun completing the Pivot Student Feedback survey on Teaching and Learning. Through their responses, students will actively shape their learning throughout the year as they reflect on our teaching practices that are supporting them to be successful. At Auburn High School we highly value this data and deconstruct it with our students. We encourage students to participate in our Teach the Teacher program, a student-led professional learning session for our teachers which focuses on the trends from our Term 1 Pivot data. In addition, students will be able to actively collaborate with their teachers, joining them for a discussion about what decisions we can make next to support student learning at Auburn. 

Study Success Seminar Days 

Year 10 & Year 11 students have participated in their Study Success Seminar Days the last two weeks. They heard from external speakers from Success Integrated who supported students with their motivation, organisational systems, study habits & resilience required to achieve academic excellence in Senior School. 

Year 11 students were reintroduced to their My Learning Growth tool, an individualised document where they can monitor their academic, learning behaviour and attendance data to set personalised goals throughout the term. 

Year 10 students reflected on their start to Senior School and their recent self-assessment data for their upcoming Learning Behaviour reports. This will support purposeful conversations at the upcoming Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences and enable students to monitor their growth against key benchmarks required for our Year 11 program (including, approved attendance of 90%, Learning Behaviour average of a minimum 6.0).

This year as part of our new Strategic Plan we have embedded a wellbeing goal as part of student goal setting for 2024. Students have been introduced to the pillars of health and have been encouraged to focus on one they would like to enhance this year. These pillars and suggested goals have been aligned with wellbeing components of the Student Attitudes to School Survey (DET) and our Pivot Wellbeing survey which the Year 10s are trialling this year.

After a BBQ lunch, students participated in sport or team building competitions to foster connectedness within their year levels. 

Thank you to our Year Level Leaders Luke Dellorso (Year 11) and David Felbel (Year 10) for facilitating such successful days for our students. Members of our Leadership Team, Peter Ryan (Leading Teacher - Curriculum 10-12), Samantha Francis (Leading Teacher - Assessment, Feedback & Data-Driven Practice) and Anna Naylor (Learning Specialist – Wellbeing & Inclusion) have also been integral in designing these days for our students to maximise their Term 1 reflection. This is an ongoing process to support students in preparation for their 2025 Course Counselling in Term 3. We encourage families to open a dialogue with their child about their reflections on 2024 and the goals that they are setting themselves.

Attendance Requirements in Senior School 

Ongoing attendance to every class is one of the essential factors for academic success. Now that we are halfway through the term Year Level Leaders and Tutor Group Teachers will be carefully monitoring student attendance. You are able to see our Tutor Group approved absences below.

Communications will be sent home for students who are below our 90% attendance requirements at this point in the term. We ask that families support the work of the Senior School team in monitoring attendance, parents should ensure that they ‘approve’ legitimate student absences through the Compass portal. Please upload documentation such as medical certificates for Year Level Leaders to review. Students are encouraged to also monitor their attendance through Compass. Failure to achieve a 90% attendance rate for each VCE or IB subject could jeopardise satisfactory completion for that subject and unit. The same requirements exist for Year 10 Semester 1 subjects. Thank you for working with us to meet these requirements.