Secondary School

The Secondary School enjoyed the Principal’s Commissioning on Monday and the students certainly looked very smart and proud, for this significant event at our school.  Some of the students commented that they are excited by Mr Irving’s energy and enthusiasm and his plans for our school.

The excitement continued on Wednesday for our Years Ten to Twelve Interhouse Swimming Carnival where our students were keen to show Mr Irving their positive culture, their engagement and the way they strive for excellence in this context. 

Meanwhile, back on campus the Years Seven, Eight and Nine students enjoyed having the school to themselves where they were quick to take ownership of the corridors and outside spaces during recess and lunch.  As I watched them move around the school without the older students here, I felt like I was observing an interesting social experiment!

NAPLAN

Our practice session ran smoothly this week and our students are well-prepared for the tests which start next week.  Some learning points from today’s practice:

• Students' laptops must be fully charged.
• Students need their own set of earphones, we do not have any to lend to students.
• Students need to restart their laptops on the morning of each assessment; this is different from shutting down their devices and switching them back on.

Please see below for a reminder of our schedule:

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 from Tuesday 19 March to Friday 22 March.  All tests start at 9.00am. 

A Learner’s Toolkit

This week, I received the email below from Mia Benson in Year Twelve:

My modern history class has had some significant development in learning techniques from the start of Year Eleven to start of Year Twelve. This subject is definitely content heavy so we have weekly note-taking homework schedules. I have found these note-taking templates straightforward and useful and would recommend them to teachers and students in similar content heavy classes. 

Our class has experimented with various note-taking techniques and have progressed from spending hours on scattered, rushed and unorganised notes to concise, single page per topic, Cornell-style notes. I also like to colour code evidence for essays green and explain and link ideas pink when I go back over my notes for upcoming tests.

My class has also found Academic Support sessions very useful. Whilst preparing for an essay last week, almost the entire class attended Wednesday academic support where we did whiteboard work and group essay planning under the guidance and support of Dr Strangeways.

Here is a photo of our class at academic support:

Mrs Victoria Turnor | Head of Secondary