Assistant Principal News
It was a pleasure, last Friday, to welcome 135 new students to our College for our annual Oh! Day.
Year 6 students met their 2021 Pastoral Leader Ms Trish Star and were introduced to the College grounds. They engaged in a sample Homeroom class before being exposed to a range of authentic lessons including: Shakespearean Insults in English, making a table out of newspaper in TAS, creating clay warriors in HSIE and conducting a range of experiments in Science.
After spending the majority of the day visiting Year 6 students in the playground and in their classes, I can genuinely and confidently say that students immensely enjoyed their Marian experience and are enthusiastic about returning.
I also wish to thank the teachers involved in the facilitation of these sessions for providing engaging and relevant learning experiences.
Year 7 2021, we look forward to your arrival.
Speaking of next year, last week the College Senior Leadership presented to staff a new timetable structure for 2021. Many hours have been spent by the Timetable Committee in researching timetable structures of other Colleges, considering NESA regulations and learning the new Edval timetabling software.
As a result, we have developed a new structure that includes some exciting changes. Next year we will be moving from a 4 week structure to a 2 week timetable, aligning with the other Secondary Colleges in our Diocese. We have also increased the learning time of our Senior students for their 2 unit subjects and now will have a dedicated period each fortnight for Academic Pastoral Care and Assemblies to avoid disruptions to learning.
Our teachers will also engage in Staff Professional Learning fortnightly, with the inclusion of Professional Learning and Development within their timetables. In this time teachers will engage with new and innovative teaching strategies and plan for the implementation of these strategies in classes. I look forward to reporting back some of the exciting learning that takes place for staff next year.
This week, the College Leadership team presented an evaluation of the Annual Improvement Plan for 2020 to the CEDWW. Our College was commended by Diocesan leaders for the innovative and determined work that has taken place this year. Planning is now well underway for 2021, with many of our initiatives such as Numeracy and Assessment continuing next year. We will also have a focus on Writing, with a new Instructional Literacy Teacher posted at the College.
Further to this, in keeping in line with our goal of explicitly engaging students in their own learning, last week, the Gr8 Thinking Staff Team devised and led a range of Academic Pastoral Care Sessions for the students during their extended Homeroom time.
The purpose of the sessions was to explicitly teach students the value and purpose of formative and self assessment. Students in Year 7, 8 and 11 engaged in a form of pictionary designed to highlight the importance of feedback and peer assessment.
Meanwhile, students in Year 9 and 10 engaged in activities to ensure they were confident in understanding how and why formative assessment is used in their learning. This ties in with the College’s push for student regulated learning and self assessment through Bump it Up Walls earlier in the year.
Next week, Students in Years 7, 8 and 9 will sit ACER PAT Testing in both Reading and Maths. These tests are important diagnostic tools, used by the College to determine student learning growth and ongoing learning needs. I ask that parents ensure that students are present on the days scheduled, that they bring their computers fully charged and their own personal set of headphones. Below is a timetable of the tests:
Lora Segrave and Damien Herb
Co Assistant Principals