Secondary School

We are enjoying lots of excitement in Secondary School this week. 

Year Twelve students are glowing following their wonderful Ball last weekend.  I always like to thank Mrs Emma Poole and her team for their hard work but I would like to add further thanks to Emma who will be stepping down from the position this year.  Emma has worked tirelessly to make the Ball the polished, seamless event it has become and we are all grateful for her creativity and attention to detail. She has contributed to many life-long memories. A gallery of photos will be released to Year Twelve families next week.

Year Nine students are busy preparing for Camp, the Years Seven to Nine Interhouse Swimming Carnival had wonderful attendance and atmosphere, and Baudin House celebrated Baudin’s birthday.  Jazz Band has their camp this weekend and we always look forward to the results of this intensive rehearsal opportunity. 

NAPLAN

Dates for NAPLAN this year are:

Wednesday 13 March     Writing

Thursday 14 March          Reading

Friday 15 March                Language Conventions

Monday 18 March            Numeracy

Catch-up opportunities will be available every morning Tuesday 19 March to Friday 22 March. 

We will be running a practice test on Wednesday 28 February to help students familiarise themselves with the platform and make sure that the NAPLAN application on their devices is functioning as we expect.  Students will use dummy names for this test and no responses will be collected or marked. As with the NAPLAN tests in Weeks Seven and Eight, it is important that students arrive at school with their fully-charged devices and a set of earphones.

If you would like to explore the NAPLAN platform at home, NAPLAN provide this through their public demonstration site here.  

A Learner’s Toolkit

I have been hearing some wonderful examples of the strategies from A Learner’s Toolkit being used in classes this week.

'Retrieve It' has been a common theme with students in Physics deliberately leaving alternate questions in exercises to do in a few weeks time.  The Mathematics Team is setting 'Retrieve It' style homework tasks using the online platform Mathspace to ask the students questions on their current topic as well as questions from topics studied last year.  Media students have been using flash cards to learn definitions and have been able to improve from one or two correct responses from five cards at the beginning of every lesson, to five out of five.

Mrs Emma Franklin and I have been working with Year Eleven students, targeting the strategies to help ease their transition into their final two years of schooling.  Poet told me that she appreciated that the strategies have been proven to be effective.  Mila loved that there are a range of effective strategies.  Harry was impressed that effective learning comes from visual and non-visual strategies, regardless of the type of learner you might be.

If your child has news about the improvements to their learning from one of the above strategies, encourage them to let me know.

Mrs Victoria Turnor | Head of Secondary

Year Eight Science - Making a Model Thermometer

Year Eight students were tasked with making a model thermometer which they could test with warm hands and ice. The model relied on gas in the conical flask expanding and pushing the colored water through a clear plastic tube.

Ms Diane Thomas | Teacher