Learning & Teaching

School Diaries 2024

One of the challenges of secondary schooling is the management of timelines and workload. Students coming into year 7 transition from a learning experience that is guided by one main classroom teacher to working with as many as seven different teachers in a semester. As students move into middle and senior secondary the challenges shift to managing the volume of work that is required and developing independent study skills that assist with achieving positive results in VCE and beyond.

Vermont Secondary College has elected to return to the traditional school diary after reflecting on the importance of assisting students from junior school to senior school establish mindful practices, such as, allowing students to record any key notes, reminders and tasks for their subjects at the start and end of lesson. Following a process that sought input and feedback from students and teachers, we are very proud of the 2024 school diary that is available for purchase via Campion. 

A front cover competition was won by Ryan Hoskin of Year 11, who created a design that celebrates Vermont Secondary’s proud culture of academic and cross curricular programs. The diary has a year long calendar of key dates for the VSC community, school policies and two page per week layout, with room for reflection and some notes. Additional notes are available within the diary and every term has a single page chart for tracking the topics and their assessment timelines. I would like to acknowledge the work of Akhila Gollamudi for her capable collaboration in creating questionnaires and collating student feedback to inform the changes that were adopted for the new diary.

We encourage students throughout the junior school, years 7 – 9, to purchase and make use of the school diary. Senior students are also able to purchase the diary although many of them will have already developed a personalised approach to recording key tasks and submission dates.

The college seeks the support of year 7 – 9 parents in ensuring the diary is purchased for the child at the start of the 2024 school year, so that teachers can assist students to learn a key management strategy for their child.